After reading Jessica’s post about the title of the graphic
novel, I began speculating on the issue. On page 36, Bechdel states that they
call the funeral home the “fun home”. This is an obvious shortening of the word
funeral to fun, first of all, but that leads to the question of why is this relevant.
I thought that this was one of the many uses of symbolism that Bechdel employs.
She is trying to symbolize the idea that death is perpetually present, from
having the funeral home or from her father’s death spurring the events of the
book. Branching off of the idea of her dad’s death, I thought that perhaps
Bechdel was trying to employ irony in the idea that she wanted her house to be
a fun home in that it was an enjoyable place to be. Instead, with her father’s
death, her house became the fun home because the idea of his death was always
hanging over his head. Did anyone else see an abundance of symbolism?
For me, when I hear the word fun home, I think of a fun house, like at a circus or fair. A world that doesn't make any sense and everything is twisted and dark but in the end part of the fun is figuring out a way out. I may be overreaching but I think she means that part of the fun of her home was trying to find a way out of her home, a home where everything was backwards and twisted and confusing.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child growing up on the outskirts of Hagerstown, the Great Hagerstown Fair came to town every year in August. A prominent feature of the fair was the fun house. We rode through the dark interior of the fun house in little cars riding on rails, and all sorts of scary things would leap out at us. In reality, this so-called fun house, was meant to be a house of horrors. I wonder if that was the kind of fun house that Bechdel was alluding to in Fun Home? I think that Haley's interpretation makes sense. It is not overreaching at all.
ReplyDeleteYour reference to a carnival fun house is very insightful. That meaning of the term had not even crossed my mind. They distort what is really there and are usually considered dark.
DeleteThe idea of Alison dealing with the ever present idea of death hanging over her, and her dealing with it was by creating irony in her life; for instance, by shortening funeral to fun as well as other aspects.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of the fun house at a carnival being what Bechdel signified in the autographic. But at the same time, I think she and her brothers thought that the funeral home, particularly the area that their grandmother lived in, was an escape for the children from the tension of their home. When they were with their grandmother, they could escape the tension and fights in their parents' relationship and could see their father as a human being through stories of his childhood.
ReplyDelete