An important aspect explored by Alison Bechdel in Fun Home is her relationship with her father, Bruce. During her childhood, there seems to be constant friction between Bechdel and Bruce and she applies the Daedalus-Icarus metaphor to describe her relationship with her father. However, when Bechdel discovers that her father is a closeted homosexual, she tries to understand his open lesbian identity in relation to her identity, realizing that the mythical metaphor doesn't actually hold up. At the center of Fun Home, Bechdel places a two-page photo of her babysitter Roy, taken by her father, whom she finds after Bruce's death. As she tries to look at the photo through Bruce's eyes, she feels connected to him. This pivotal moment divides the text into two parts and allows Bechdel to revisit and re-characterize his relationship with his father in the second part after having already characterized it in the first part. Thus, the recursive nature of Bechdel's story, fragmented chronologically through the use of repetition, allows Bechdel to reexamine her relationship with her father based on the mythic metaphor she applies to him. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Bruce's sudden death before Bechdel can begin to explore her relationship with him forces her to find ways to understand his identity after his death. Bechdel discovers her father's sexual identity through a telephone conversation with her mother when she reveals that she is a lesbian. This comes as a shock to her system, but then she realizes that she shares a deeper bond with her father than she had imagined, as they both face a sexual identity crisis. One of the ways she explores Bruce's identity is through photographs, particularly the photo her father takes of Roy which she finds after his death. The non-chronological structure and recursive narrative of Fun Home lead Bechdel to place this moment of connection at the heart, or center, of the text rather than at the end. This forms a central point of the book, after which his use of the Daedalus-Icarus myth as a metaphor for his relationship with his father is viewed with a refreshed perspective. The shift in perspective occurs after she becomes aware of her connection to her father, and she thus returns her sexual identity to its rightful place in her memory before re-examining their relationship. This allows her to juxtapose her interpretation of the Daedalus-Icarus myth metaphor related to her and her father before and after learning and understanding his sexual identity. Thus, she places these panels respectively before and after the pivotal moment. Roy's photograph is visual and material evidence of the parallel life Bruce had lived. Highlighting the photo's ability to disrupt her family, something Bruce has feared all his life, Bechdel places the strips of negatives depicting her and her brothers playing on the beach immediately after Roy's photo. However, the proximity of these ostensibly disparate images testifies to his father's simultaneous inhabitation of two different worlds. Roy's image is much more emphasized by enlarging it to a double page compared to the thin panel representing the negative strips appearing on the following page. This illustrates that his father's true life and identity lay in the life he tried to hide, his life as a closeted homosexual, and not in the "ideal husband and father" (17) that he seemed. be. By placing Roy's image at the center of the page, Bechdel recognizes the importance of his father's hidden identity in understanding his behavior during his childhood memories, and subsequently,of her relationship with him in the past. The different visual elements of the image highlight its emotional character. importance. The frame includes Bechdel's hand holding the image, creating the impression that she is trying to see through her father's eyes. Drawing on the aesthetics of photography to find its deeper meaning, Bechdel says: ““The blur of the photo gives it an ethereal, painterly quality. Roy is golden in the morning light of the seaside. His hair is a halo.” This description of the image in a text box shows Bechdel seeing the photograph framed by his father's sexual desire. When she finds the photograph, she seems to be able to connect with the man behind the camera and the fact that she can make this connection through the photograph surprises her. She recognizes that “the photo is beautiful” and wonders why she is “not really outraged” as she might be if the photo instead represented a seventeen-year-old girl. She says, “Perhaps I identify too well with my father’s illicit fear.” The connection comes from Bechdel's realization that she and her father have a "reverse Oedipal complex", which she discusses in the final pages of the book. Because of this complex, she sees that "while she was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was trying to express something feminine through her." Immediately before Roy's image, Bechdel goes back to when she was a child and describes her father's shared interest in the image of a young man posing in an Esquire magazine fashion spread - she wants the suit , while his father wants the boy. , and in anticipation of the scene to follow, there is another series of glances as she holds the magazine and her father looks over his shoulder at the image. Roy's image inverts this structure as Bechdel draws herself holding the photograph that gives her access to what her father saw, as if looking over her shoulder. In both cases, she cannot separate herself from her father's sexuality. Bechdel's first in-depth consideration of her relationship with her father, through a reference to the Daedalus-Icarus myth, appears early in Fun Home – this first consideration is how Bechdel viewed their relationship as she was growing up. One of the first scenes depicted in Fun Home is of Bruce balancing nine or ten year old Bechdel on his foot in a rendition of the game "Airplane". Bechdel visually represents herself as "tumbling", thus depicting the legend of Icarus traditionally with herself in the Icarus, overly ambitious position. Just as Icarus tries to get closer to the sun, Bechdel tries to feel closeness to his father; and just as Daedalus warns Icarus not to get too close, Bruce also seems closed off to Bechdel's efforts to get close to him. She describes the position she finds herself in as uncomfortable, but “well worth the rare physical contact” she had with her father. Bechdel continues this metaphor and compares Bruce to Daedalus, describing how he is more concerned with restoring the house than his own children. He is so absorbed in his project that he does not recognize his role as father to his children; rather he uses them as “hands” to help him in his projects – “Daedalus too was indifferent to the human cost of his projects”. We see Bechdel's lack of connection with her father, as she is unable to understand his obsession with his restoration project. Bruce's obsession with a perfect outward appearance comes from being ashamed of his sexual identity; he tries to protect his family by making sure the fact that he is gay remains hidden. Bechdel says: “He used his clever artificenot to create things, but to make things appear to be what they were not. That is to say, impeccable.” By attempting to present his family and home as ideal, Bruce attempts to compensate for the shame he feels and fears that his family's image will be ruined in society due to his homosexuality. Bruce's shame regarding his own sexual identity leads him to fear the fact that his daughter is a lesbian, rather than supporting it. So, while he tries to force Bechdel to have "pink and flowery curtains" in his room, as if to impose femininity on him, friction arises between the two, because Bechdel does not know of his father's hidden gay identity . Bruce is so afraid of people finding out he's gay that he tries to make his family seem perfect, placing Bechdel within the stereotypical confines of a girl. Bechdel feels like her father is restricting her, just as Daedalus tried to stop Icarus from flying too close to the sun for his own good. Daedalus advises Icarus to prevent his fall; in Fun Home, it is not immediately clear in the first reference to the myth how exactly Bruce "saves" or "helps" his family through his obsession with outward appearances. However, when Bechdel returns to the myth at the end of the text, after the crucial connection point, it finally falls into place. The panel shown at the end of the text is very similar to the one shown at the beginning; In both images, Bechdel is lying on top of her father, arms outstretched, as if she is flying. Bechdel ends his story with the phrase: “He rushed into the sea, of course. But in the delicate reverse narrative that drives our intertwined stories, he was there to catch me when I jumped.” She realizes that Bruce was there for her during her life more than she realized, and so she must recreate her childhood memories with this new understanding. Before the pivotal moment when Bechdel finally understands her father's actions, she characterizes herself as Icarus and her father as Daedalus. Icarus's failure to escape due to his wings melting can be compared to the failed connection Bechdel feels as a child in her relationship with Bruce. However, she says, "in our particular reenactment of this mythical relationship, it was not me but my father who was to fall from the sky." Here, Bechdel suggests that his relationship with his father, in retrospect, did not actually follow the path of the relationship between Daedalus and Icarus and that the metaphor deteriorates because they can both occupy the position of Icarus, but unlike Icarus , they are released from their respective position. successfully “prison” without drowning. She places the image of the truck in the panel to emphasize her father's sudden death as they begin to open up to each other, much like Icarus' sudden death while he was flying. However, unlike Icarus's death, which comes at the moment when he feels most liberated as he flies near the sun, Bruce's death is a form of liberation for him, because during his life he is limited by the fact that it cannot be released. open about his sexual identity. Bruce dies shortly after she told him she was a lesbian and learned he was gay through a phone conversation with his mother. Since she does not have time to explore her relationship with him while she is alive, her only way to do so is to re-examine her existing memories of him. Bechdel realizes that her father was actually there for her even though she didn't recognize him. earlier. Just as Daedalus gave Icarus wings to escape, Bruce also gives Bechdel “wings” by introducing her to the world of literature, so that she can explore and understand her identity as a lesbian. He suggests that she read.