Wrapping It All Up!

In my previous entries regarding the theme of sexuality in Fun Home, I focused on both Bechdel and her father in separate instances, and which factors went into each characters' discovery, exposure, and contributing factors to discovering their homosexuality. As my posting in this blog comes to a close, I've decided to wrap it all off with the "aftermath", so to speak. No longer will I delve into the past of each person, but I will address how the events of Bechdel's father's death affected Bechdel, and her thoughts regarding them.

As most of the graphic novel is a recollection of Bechdel's memories and how her home and family life factored into the discovery of her sexuality, most instances of death are touched on and scattered throughout the story, almost as an afterthought. Bechdel recalls the instance in which she finds out about her father's death while she's in college, and her reaction to it. To her, his death is "absurd", and quite unexpected and random until she begins trying to make sense of his untimely death. Although it is never revealed that her father committed suicide, Bechdel still maintains that the fact that she came out to her parents might have been a contributing factor to his death. One of the last meaningful conversations with her father involved her lesbianism, and Bechdel still wonders, to this day, if this conversation was enough to spur her father to take his own life.

In a sense, with Bechdel questioning the inconsistencies and mysteries behind her father's death, it also allows her to explore the gap between them, as well as the similarities that tied them together; in terms of their respective gender identities and sexualities. Although Bechdel will never know the true manner in which her father died, she is still able to hold onto his history and his memory. Here is a good site that thoroughly covers both the themes of death and sexuality in an in-depth fashion.