Author: lennono

In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home it is apparent how profoundly her parents influenced the way that she understood and portrayed herself. A lot of Bechdel’s understanding of herself derived from her father posthumously. One particular similarity that Bechdel and her father, Bruce, shared was their coming into their sexuality during college. Alison, at the age of 19, labeled herself as a lesbian and understood her own sexuality. The pictures that she found of her father wearing a women’s bathing suit when he was in college did not strike her as being a fraternity prank. Instead she saw says “He’s wearing a women’s bathing suit. A fraternity prank? But the pose he strikes is not mincing or silly at all. He’s lissome, elegant” (Bechdel, 120). When she and her father are at a diner, they see a butch truck driver who Alison immediately identifies with, though she hides this fact from her father. He asks her if she wants to look like the truck driver, to which Alison immediately replies “no”, because she could not answer him honestly. Bruce passed down to Alison his own struggle with identity, forcing her to feel like she should reject part of herself so as to conform to heteronormative society. Kate Bornstein’s piece Gender Outlaw also discusses this rejection of identity as a way to avoid criticism, scrutiny, or worse. She says that to stay safe, one must bury themselves deep within the closet. Bruce does this more or not successfully, but in doing so he shows his daughter to do the same. Whatever the case, Bruce’s influence on Alison had such a profound effect on her even into her adulthood. She chose to write a memoir and centralize the plot on her relationship with her parents, and more specifically on her relationship with her father.

Throughout the novel, we learn more about Tyler’s internal struggle to define who and what he is. He says that he is “not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and non-existence” (77). Rather than just existing as he is, he feels that he needs to label his identity. When Tyler first meets Mala Ramchandin, he is immediately drawn to her, and sympathizes with her. In one of their first encounters, Tyler says “I brought my face inches away from hers and whispered, ‘If I were strapped like that, I would hate it, too.’ And then I felt foolish, for what was the point of empathizing without taking more positive action?” Though he is not talking about Mala being trapped in her identity like he is, I think it is an excellent physical representation of how Tyler feels. Mala physically cannot move because she is tightly strapped to her bed, while Tyler is trapped in his “in-between-ness” of identity. He says he “would” hate being strapped down like Mala, which he is, in a different way. Perhaps Tyler realizes this after, as he asks what was the point of “empathizing”, rather than just sympathizing. This shows that he knows how she feels in his own way.

Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red retells the ancient Greek myth of Herakles slaying Geryon, a red-winged monster. From Geryon’s perspective, we discover his humanity, and the toll that his relationship with Herakles took on him. From Geryon’s perspective, we discover a love story that we otherwise wouldn’t have known about. I think that retelling this story from Geryon’s perspective also causes the reader to question who was really the “bad guy”. This is to say that we often misinterpret who characters are when we only hear about them from one perspective. From the ancient Greek myth, we are lead to believe that Herakles is the hero and Geryon is evil. From Autobiography of Red our opinions shift because Geryon is the one getting his heart broken by Herakles. I think that the retelling of this ancient Greek myth is significant because it notifies the reader to be skeptical of the narrator, as there is always another side to the story. Furthermore, this retelling is showing readers the perspective of someone who is misunderstood. More specifically, this retelling is giving someone who is misunderstood the chance to be understood and even accepted. If we don’t hear the stories of those that we don’t understand, then we can never learn to accept them. I also think this novel exposes which story society is more willing to accept and continue telling. Geryon is misunderstood and therefore his story is ignored, much like how people who identify as anything but normal are silenced. Anna Carson’s Autobiography of Red reimagines the myth of Herakles and Geryon and gives a voice to the character who was silenced.

“On top of having ordinary sexual shame, and on top of having shame for being gay, the dignified homosexual also feels ashamed for every queer who flaunts his sex and his faggotry, making the dignified homosexual’s stigma all the more justifiable in the eyes of the straights. On top of that he feels shame about his own shame, the fatedness of which he is powerless to redress,” (Warner, 32).

Warner is stating that some homosexuals may not feel a sense of kinship with other homosexuals. In fact, Warner is saying that the behavior of homosexuals who embrace or parade their homosexuality may actually repel the homosexuals who do not share these characteristics. Warner’s statement reminds me of an episode of the television show “Glee”. In this particular episode, Kurt Hummel, a gay member of the glee club, is bullied by one of the boys on the football team named Dave Karofsky. To give some background, Kurt is openly gay and he dresses and acts in a flamboyant manner. The bullying continues until Kurt confronts Dave in the boys’ locker room. The confrontation reaches an apex when Dave kisses Kurt, a reaction that Kurt had not been expecting in the slightest. Kurt attempts to help Dave sort through his confusion and embrace his homosexuality, but Dave denies that anything happens and resumes bullying Kurt. This situation is very similar to the one that Warner describes. Dave, who is a football player and therefore perceived to be masculine and heterosexual, is perhaps jealous of Kurt, who is gay and is accepted as gay by other members of the community. Even more so, Kurt’s flamboyant dress and manner might suggest to Dave that if comes out then he too will be perceived as flamboyant. Though Warner is perhaps talking about already openly gay people, it certainly can apply to this situation between an openly gay person and a closeted person.

“Why is the measure of love loss?” (9)

I chose this sentence because it repeats several times throughout the course of the novel. The narrator seems to be the type of person that falls in love very quickly and very deeply. However, for the narrator, each time their relationship ends with one of these people, they seem to be alright. In the case of the narrator’s relationship with Louise, this is not true. The narrator spends almost half the novel reflecting on how much they miss Louise, or how beautiful she is, or how much she loves her. It is evident that the narrator feels a great deal of loss from having to leave Louise, and perhaps did not realize just how much she loved her when she was actually with her. The form of this sentence is a question. This shows the narrator’s confusion, or lack of an answer. However, the form of the sentence also suggests that the narrator believes that the measure of love is loss, but is simply asking why that is. The cliché “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone” is very much like this sentence, however, as the narrator also reiterates several times “It’s the clichés that cause all the trouble.” Perhaps the narrator is simply restating this cliché in their own words so as not to cause any “trouble”. Though this sentence is perhaps not the best for close reading on its own, when taken into context, the narrator is often talking about their relationship with Louise. In conclusion, this sentence reveals the narrator’s opinion of love, in that one does cannot realize how much he/she loves someone until they are gone. This applies to the text as a whole because it becomes a theme. The narrator’s repetition of this sentence times reveals how much they love and miss Louise, even before we know that the narrator has left her. This sentence is imperative to the novel because it revolves around the love life of the narrator, and gives a deeper sense of how each relationship has impacted the narrator and shaped their opinions.

“They did it, my parents did it, now I will do it won’t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleep walking to that armchair,” (10).

The narrator is talking about the mindlessness of marriage. The “they” is the narrator’s grandparents, suggesting that this cycle is something the narrator has not just witnessed from their parents, but from another generation as well. The addition of “won’t I” reveals the narrator’s hesitation or doubt about getting married, thereby falling into the cycle. “Arms outstretched” implies that the narrator is going towards an embrace, but they tell us that this isn’t to hold “you” but instead to keep their balance. This suggests that the narrator views marriage to be an individual act of balancing, not mutual support between two people. “Keep my balance” implies that falling, thereby failing, at marriage is a possibility. Perhaps “keeping my balance” is the narrator’s way of revealing that they believe marriage to be very difficult and consuming. The choice of “sleep walking” implies thoughtlessness and lack of understanding behind what getting married means. The narrator is revealing their opinion that people get married for insubstantial reasons. The armchair is a symbol for monogamy and growing old with one person. The narrator has revealed that they have been with a multitude of people, and though they were with those people for varying stretches of time, not a single person has yet to stick around for a relatively significant amount of time. Additionally, the narrator has revealed that many of the people they have been with have been married, which supports the idea that the narrator does not believe in marriage and the monogamy that it entails. In general, the entire sentence reveals the narrator’s hesitation or dislike for the institution of marriage.