The Trials and Tribulations of Coming of Age

The Bechdel family from Fun Home is built on a framework of lies and secrets, each family member embodying their own compelling fiction that takes over their life. The title of the book itself is a fictional and ironic wordplay of the Bechdel family’s reality. With her father's "curatorial onslaught" and his bursts of rage, Alison's home in Fun Home is anything but fun. These rages often seem to stem from his difficulties with his architectural pursuits in which he's "indifferent to the human costs of his projects", hitting his kids and growing enraged over the simplest mistakes. In this way, Alison describes him as the half-man, half-bull minotaur. From Alison’s perspective, the minotaur, represented through Bruce's monstrous side, could be waiting around any corner. This side of Bruce is a result of his own fiction as a Victorian era aristocrat, decorating and fancifying the house in order to project himself as this extravagant version of himself...

Esther often feels like a "racehorse with no more races". She's been raised to succeed in school and tests but as she moves to adulthood, she struggles to find where she can fit in. In the first few chapters, she reaches the end of her racehorse era and is forced to discover a new identity. At one point, she even catches herself in the mirror, unable to recognize herself in New York City. In fact, it almost seems like NYC is the problem. The city seems to have corrupted her while she's experimenting with new identities. She feels so dirty with NYC, she even takes baths that make her feel as if she's "growing pure". Even after her leave of the city, her possible futures trap her (so much so, that death seems to be the only option).  I think one of the best symbols for these futures is the fig tree, a representation of her life and her possible choices. On p. 73, she says: "I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just ...