Restoration In Mr. Bechdel's Fun Home

Most people have a hobby, something that they find fun and interesting and does not necessarily make them any money. For Mr. Bechdel, one of the main focuses of our novel Fun Home, restoring his family’s eighteen sixty-seven gothic revival mini mansion was more than just a hobby. Through the course of our novel we see Mr. Bechdel turn the common pass time of restoration into an over extenuating obsession that consumes his whole life, Mr. Bechdel beings to view the idea of his perfect home as a synonym for a perfect family and life. As our novel progress we continually see Mr. Bechdel sacrifice his family’s happiness all for the sake of the perfect restoration, he takes his obsession so far that he commits suicide while restoring another property. Even though restoration brought him joy, in the end, even the happiness he received from restoring homes could not satisfy him or continue his will to live. Mr. Bechdel truly believed that restoring his home could also restore his life and change it into something that others would admire, and while he accomplished this with his gothic home the Bechdel’s family life was nothing to be desired. Alison Bechdel, the narrator, main character, and writer of our novel, truly …show more content…
Bechdel was successful with many aspects of his life he was altogether ineffective, and more bluntly put, horrible father and husband. To put the metaphor of Mr. Bechdel’s obsession with home restoration simply he was consumed by wanting to obtain perfection. Perfection in his home and in the family within it, even though a having a wife was not his true desire, a wife was needed to accurately showcase the textbook definition of “perfect family”. While Mr. Bechdel did, for a short while, obtain perfection it was not what he truly desired for his life, so he ultimately ended it. Much like the myth of Icarus and Daedalus stated in the first few pages, perfection for Mr. Bechdel was the sun, he flew to close with his wax wings and fell from