In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel recounts certain life events as being monumental in shaping how she became the person she is today. She writes from her memories of having a distant father, a melancholy mother and two brothers including herself who were caught in between. What struck me on a sympathetic level was when she compared her family to the popular comic series “The Addams Family”. As she mentions, there are many striking similarities between the two families but she fails to mention the one thing missing. Even though the Addams family were best known for being a bunch of estranged individuals, they loved each other and stuck together. I believe that as she grew up, the idea of the Addams Family gave her comfort and a sense of normality that maybe her family wasn’t as untraditional as she thought.
The Addams are a very peculiar family who liked all things
macabre and untraditional. However, they love each other, remain close, and
look out for one another. Maybe Bechdel’s familiarization with the Addams gave
her hope that if a family as strange as that one could succeed that maybe hers
could as well. I’m sure that as a
child Bechdel soon began to realize that her family was unconventional. She had
two preoccupied parents who barely showed affection for each other let alone
towards her. Her father only
seemed to really care after the dead people he was preparing for funerals and
the house he was restoring. The house décor and the obsession with the dead are
two common themes in The Addams Family comics and for Bechdel to compare those
to her own life could have given her a sense of normality after all.
Growing up having to figure out life on your own without the
help of such important figures such as your parents can be a difficult task.
Alison Bechdel’s life was exceedingly tremulous given those circumstances and
many others. She, as a child, was probably as curiously minded as all young
ones are and was searching for answers about her family whether consciously or
subconsciously. Her being able to mirror her own life with the Addams life showed
that she was excited about realizing that her family’s lifestyle was not unlike
another’s and it acted as a way for her to fill the void that parents had
failed to fill so far in her life.
I like how you tied the Addams family into your blog. I agree that the Addams family was a tight knit family. Although they were strange and lived very differently than most, it was obvious the love they shared for one another. Alison longed for a family like the Addams family over her own. She brings them up a few times during the text. I wonder why she chose this family though, out of all the fictional families to compare hers too. It could be that she dreamed of having this type of family, hoping one day they would all be close. Eventually, she becomes close to her father, but by then it is too late.
ReplyDeleteI could also see why she chose the Addams family because they lived in an old, traditional, gothic-like dwelling. Her father had restored their entire house, which could have also resembled the house the Addams family lived in. She could have been not only comparing that they all did their own thing, but that they lived in a similar home style.
Although the Addams family was an odd group, I think Alison wish she had at least that connection. She had no connection to her mother, her father, and her brothers were barely mentioned. Her family was untraditional and it is sad that she had to compare her family to fictional characters in order to make herself feel better.
Great blog! The pictures made a great addition to your blog :)
This blog is so pink.
ReplyDeleteGreat observations! The Bechdel family definitely lacks the love of the Addams Family.
ReplyDeleteBechdel says she related a lot with the Addams Family, but I also think that Charles Addams' comics did more than just help her come to terms with her strange family. I think Bechdel references the Addam's Family in her graphic novel to pay homage to a cartoonist that inspired her to become a cartoonist herself. Just as we talked about "playing Freud" in class and identifying childhood events that caused later personality traits, I believe this is one of the moments that led Bechdel to become an illustrator. I think we also see this when she references the "Wind in the Willows" coloring book on page 146 and in her drawing of basketball players on page 170. She connects with illustrations, and drawing is how she connects and learns about the world.
Great work, and I loved the pictures!
This was indeed a great observation of her comparison to the Addam's family. I never considered the importance of the difference between the two until you pointed it out. I think it's also possible that she related not just her family to the Addam's family but perhaps the her entire inspiration to it as well, at least the artist part of it. I wonder if the similarities between the mansions as well as her being surrounded by death also gave her reason for the comparison.
ReplyDeleteI like your analysis. I really like how you mentioned the Addams Family, and how their abnormality gave the narrator acceptance of her own family. There are many similarities that both her family and the Addams Family share, which helps her accept the nontraditional family that she has. I also believe that her comparison to the Addams Family reveals the type of relationship that she wished that she had with her own family. Although the Addams Family was very odd in comparison to their neighbors, they were extremely close to one another, which is something that the narrator wished for her own family.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the pictures that you included. They really enhanced your analysis.