Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is an autobiography written by Alison Bechdel. The graphic novel takes its readers through Alison Bechdel’s childhood using engaging diction and detailed drawings. One of the biggest themes of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is the discovery of one’s sexual orientation. Over the course of her life, Alison Bechdel eventually comes to the realization that she is a lesbian. Interestingly, Alison Bechdel uses this novel to recount her experience of events that helped to shape her personal identity, which resulted in a transformation of the way she sees herself. In the end, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a wonderful narrative that shows its readers the complexity of personal identity, and how things like sexual orientation, love, the values of society, and politics can all play a part in the shaping of one’s character.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic uses various concepts in order to show its readers the search Alison Bechdel embarks upon in order to discover who she is. The online Oxford English Dictionary defines personal identity as, “the essential or intrinsic…show more content… Consequently, it is through her sexuality that Alison Bechdel discovered feminism. Bechdel writes, “In the harsh light of my dawning feminism, everything looked different” (81). Here, Bechdel is saying that by discovering and joining the feminist movement, she began to see the world, and herself, in a way she never had before. Bechdel goes on to say, “This entwined political and sexual awakening was a welcome distraction” (81). Apparently for Alison Bechdel, lesbianism and feminism went hand in hand, and they both opened her eyes to a world she never knew as a child. She was grateful for this transformation that she underwent and declared it to be a “welcome distraction” (81). Clearly, Bechdel felt that she was on the right path on her search for her