THREADS
thread of DEATH
thread of CAPTIVITY
"I never wrote another poem, and soon, I abandoned color too" (Bechtel, 130).
"It was not, at any rate, a triumphal return. Home, as I had known it, was gone" (Bechtel, 215).
"Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death" (Bechtel, 228).
The theme of death weaves throughout almost every storyline of the novel. While Alison's father is the only character who faces literal death, every other character seems to experience death in some way. Bechdel highlights this notion of death through various scenarios. For instance, the mother experiences a death of self due to her inclination to submit to societal expectations, which leads her to stay in a loveless marriage with a homosexual man. While the mother experiences death through this, Alison showcases death of self in her constant suppression of her sexuality.
There is also a strain of death through the concentration of coming-of-age, which signifies that the old must die in order for new growth to take its place.
Finally, the role of death acts as a driving force in the novel, in that Bechdel alludes to the fact both in the text and in discussions about the text, how she bore the weight of her father's untimely death as having a correlation to her coming out as a lesbian. She also mentions that because of the way her father lived his life in lies and secrets, which she believed led him to his death, she would forever strive to be open and honest about her experiences. Through this light, it is very evident that the thread of death is integral to stringing together the masterpiece that is Fun Home.
"I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy" (Bechtel, 58).
The theme of captivity affects every character in the novel, whether Bechdel expresses this explicitly or not. For the father, there is captivity in keeping his sexuality a secret. This captivity drives him to funnel his frustrations into other areas of life, like perfectionism or aestheticism. In a way, his captivity from being closeted fosters a subordinate sense of captivity in other realms to a point where he feels so strangled by the life he leads that he chooses to end.
For Alison, she intially experiences the strain of captivity through her confusion about her sexuality. When she finally reconciles with and solidifies her sexual orientation during college, however, she is still held captive to her parents' responses to her revelation to them. Even after she has come out, she is held captive by disappointment, or more accurately, anger from her mother that has been harbored toward her father for years and most likely some jealousy from her father, who has been closeted throughout his entire marriage and will never break free from that captivity.
Although each character experiences their own version of captivity, they all contribute to a large web that strangles them as a family and leaves them in isolation, which is highlighted on page 139, when Alison says, "our selves were all we had." While this phrase would usually communicate the idea this family only had each other to count on, by separating the word "ourselves," Bechdel indicates the sense of isolation within their family, that allowed each of their individual captivities fester.
"If I had not felt compelled to share my little sexual discovery, perhaps the semi would have passed without incident four months later" (Bechtel, 59).
"Not only were we inverts. We were inversions of one another. While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him... He was attemptimng to express something feminine through me" (Bechtel, 98).
"Our selves were all we had" (Bechtel, 139).