Summary Of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

It is by no mistake that Bechdel calls her father a skillful artificer. In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bruce Bechdel shows signs of being a melancholic. His melancholy results from the repression of his homosexuality and the shame that comes along with it. Bruce creates distractions for himself throughout his life so that he doesn’t have to deal with these feelings. Bruce feels obligated to paint a perfect picture of his life. By his end, he has mastered the art of artifice. To start off the memoir, Bechdel makes it a point to explain the distractions Bruce creates for himself in his life. He is constantly busy with some project he has assigned himself; whether it is revamping his old broken down home or just decorating for the holidays. Bruce treats his kids like they are extensions of his body and has them do tasks for him. He is so consumed with his objective that he, like Daedalus, is …show more content…
When Bechdel asks him why he is seeing a psychologist, he replies, “I’m bad, not good like you” (153). Even this interaction Bechdel describes as a “shameful mien.” After Bechdel comes out as a lesbian, Bruce writes her a letter saying, “taking sides is rather heroic, and I am not a hero” (211). This continues the idea that Bechdel is good, a hero, while he is not. Even though Bruce sees himself as worthless he needs reassurance from Bechdel that he is not. When she takes an English class while away at college, he talks her ear off on the phone about all the literature that she’s reading, leaving little room for her own thoughts or ideas. Bruce tries to make himself out to be admirable with all of his knowledge. Now, when Bechdel thinks about these interactions she finds it hard to tell if he was the “vicarious teacher or the vicarious student” (201). It is interesting to think that Bruce was not teaching Bechdel but he was reporting to her all that he knew about the text like a student in order to impress