The characters in both Cereus Blooms at Night and Fun Home have bonds with others who also keeps their own truths within. For example, Tyler, the Nurses Aid at the Paradise Alms Home, is drawn to Miss Ramchandin because they both hold truths that are unknown to anyone but themselves. It is eluded throughout the entire story of Cereus Blooms at Night that Tyler is gay and this is his truth. Miss Ramchandin’s truth is held within her life story, the story of her father’s sexual abuse. In fact, Tyler uses the exploration of Mala’s story to relate and analyze his own sexuality and desires. “Miss Ramchandin and I, too, had a camaraderie: we had found our own ways and fortified ourselves against the rest of the world” (48). From the beginning of Cereus Blooms at Night, Tyler explains that he is the only person who knows the truth about Mala’s life. The whole truth. In a sense, the relationship between Mala and Tyler help each character grow and reveal their own truths. Tyler’s story becomes interwoven with Mala’s. “For there were two: one, a shared queerness with Miss Ramchandin, which gave rise to the other, my proximity to the very Ramchandin Nana herself had known of” (48).
In Fun Home, we are presented with a bond between the author, Alison Bechdel, and her father, both of whom can identify as gay. Alison’s father grew up during a time where being homosexual was not at all accepted as a societal norm. He too, is still unsure of his sexuality and tries to hide its presence. Even when Alison shares the fact that she is a lesbian with her parents, her Dad’s only response is, “Everyone should experiment. It’s healthy” (77), and “At least you’re human. Everyone should experiment” (210). His remarks to the reveling of her truth, was insufficient to Alison. These two quotes actually come from almost paralleled events within the story. Since Fun Home is a graphic novel, we can use the pictures as well as the text to understand the feelings of Alison from this reaction from her father. The drawings on both page 77 and 201, are identical. Alison’s eyes are staring straight down diagonally, almost blank, and she is anxiously playing with the phone cord. The reader can gather that Alison is dissatisfied with her father’s reaction. This dissatisfaction, along with other clues to her father’s own homosexuality, may relate to her father’s own feelings about homosexuality, and conclude that his same sex relationships are too, just experiments.