**Warning Spoiler Alert**
I am absolutely loving the book "Fun Home" and have not been able to put it down since I started reading it. I have been enthralled with her story and the bi-lines of her family and the human persistence in assigning fault and blame. I have been fixated on the accident/suicide scenario first because of the family's reaction and later for the cause. I wondered if it was an accident at all, as everyone else has, but more so because of their need to call it suicide. If it is suicide does that exonerate them in some way from all the misery in his life? If it was an accident is that somehow more tragic because they never got a chance to develop a relationship with him...could they have? Upon pondering this I got to the section about the 1976 Fourth of July celebration in NYC. Her father washed his face, put them to bed and went out into the night into what epidemiologists would pin point as one of the biggest proponents of the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Sailors and people from all over the world met, had unprotected sex (possibly with multiple partners) and soon thereafter- the emergence of AIDS in the US. That got me really wondering if perhaps on top of the arrest and unfulfilled life, did Bruce contract AIDS that one wild night of uninhabited self-indulgence? As Bechdel said in her book, denying your sexuality is akin to death so in this case, his life was denied and then, just maybe, he got an expiration date. The combination of the factors may have been too much for him (or anyone for that matter) and he stepped in front of a truck to end it. While it may seem a little far fetched, the ravishes of AIDS in conjunction with being forced into celibacy to avoid infecting another and the stigma assigned to it if this was indeed the case, would be enough to drive anyone to the edge. Tragic no matter how you spin it, but compelling nonetheless.
Leah, You have expressed an interesting thought in your post, an idea that did not occur to me. All that I can say is that your theory is plausible and rational. I suspect, however, that we will never know for certain whether Bruce's death was suicide or an accident.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely propose an interesting idea... and like Charles said, it is possible. However, obviously, there is no way we'll ever be able to find out. Either way I believe that Bruce's death was no accident. What we clearly can see in the book is Bruce's self-hatred. On page 153, Bruce says to Alison, "I'm bad. Not good like you." These words show the way Bruce views himself as "bad." So whether or not the contraction of AIDs was the final push towards suicide, there were definitely other harmful emotional issues that brought him to the edge.
ReplyDeleteLeah, I really enjoyed this post and you made connections between areas in the text that I had not seen before. I think that the suspense in this book of not necessarily knowing why things happened is why it is so intriguing.
ReplyDelete