By Nicemode Charles.
[Authors Note; In this assignment, we were asked to show how Alison Bechdel use a word or word pair to represent something about her father and her relationship to her father. In this essay I chose the word “minotaur” to show the evolution of Alison’s feelings towards her father as she learns about his sexuality, his weaknesses and later tries to relate with him]
Fig. 1. Panels showing Alison being scared of Bruce and her running away from him (Bechdel, 12 ).
Alison Bechdel, the author of a graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, uses the title “Fun Home” ironically to explore a complicated father-daughter relationship. Bechdel initially uses the Greek word “minotaur” on page 12, which is related to Greek mythology, to show a time in Alison’s childhood life when her father, Bruce, was both a threatening presence and a good craftsman. In the myth, the “minotaur” has the head of a bull and the body of a human “minotaur”. The word minotaur is used as a metaphor for Bruce to show and foreshadow his two personalities as both a good and a bad man. Bruce is abusive to his family, which relates symbolically to the head of the bull in the minotaur, but he is also a good artist, which reflects to the body of the human. He creates beautiful antiques and people love him for that. Bechdel’s use of the word “minotaur” and its connection to Bruce establishes a stage for a reader to be ready for the tragic event that will happen later in the book, which is the death of Bruce just after Alison reveals to her family that she is a lesbian. His death makes Alison become even more conflicted in her feelings towards him. In order to go through all this emotional turmoil, Alison starts reflecting back on her relationship with her father when she was a child and tries to figure out any signs that would make her understand whether Bruce really died in an accident or if he killed himself. During her reflection, we see Alison’s evolving viewpoint of her father–she saw him as a monster when she was a child and later learned to understand why he was always aggressive around his family, and even to identify with him in certain ways..
Alison and Bruce do not have a good relationship as a father and a daughter. Bruce is an aggressive and abusive father, even though he is also a responsible family man. Bruce is also connected to the human side of a minotaur as he is seen as a very good man in people’s eyes in his small town, and due to his reputation as an artist, a teacher and a businessman of his funeral home. At the same time his family, especially his wife, knows about his bad side, which includes his sexual affairs with underage boys. This reveals his monster side and can be connected to the minotaur in that it captured young boys and girls and took their innocence. The minotaur is trapped in the labyrinth and once people get in the labyrinth it is hard to get out. This can be connected to Bruce because he feels trapped in his small town where he cannot explore his sexuality and lives a life he does not want with a family he does not love.
Bechdel uses the word pairs “half-bull”, “half-man monster,” (12) in interdependent panels which also relate to the word “minotaur” to show Bruce’s dual nature and portray Alison’s relationship with her Father (McCloud). The use of the words makes the reader feel scared and view Bruce as a monster figure and a terrible father. This is emphasized by the darker shading of Bruce’s figure in the first panel. Alison foreshadows his aggressive behavior by the use of these words and shows us how Bruce hates his family; because of this he takes his frustrations out on them by being abusive. Bruce is like a ticking bomb around his family; his children fear him and grow up to hate him. We see this in the second panel where Alison is trying to run away from the house to try and escape her father. All this relates to Bruce being a minotaur due to his anger issues when he is around his family but also living a life of pretense when he is in the society trying to be someone he is not. Bechdel succeeds in using word pairs in interdependent panels to show Allison’s fear of her father due to his monster side.
The human side of the minotaur can be connected to Bruce’s talent as an artist, as he uses his art to express his emotions because part of him is also human. In the first panel, we see the image of Bruce in a darker shade and Alison looking at him feeling scared and worried that he is going to beat her. We see the young Allison holding the broken antique. This is very important as it shows us that Bruce is merciless with his children when they break some of his antiques. Bruce shows love for his art more than he does for his children because it is the only way he can have an escape from living in a world where gay men are not accepted in the society. He treats his antiques in a very special way because they are a part of him; he uses them to express his inner beauty that he is forced to hide in real life. Though Alison does not have a good relationship with her father, she learns to appreciate her father’s art and understand that it is the only way that he can express his feelings as a gay man.
Since the labyrinth is the minotaur’s home, Bechdel refers to Alison’s house as a labyrinth. “He hid the minotaur in the labyrinth a maze of passages and rooms opening endlessly into one another” (Bechdel 12). Bruce craves freedom in his sexuality and since he cannot really express this in the small town, he tries to make his house into a maze of possibilities so he can find some outlet for his energies. This connection between Bruce and the minotaur helps us understand the evolution of Alison’s relationship with her dad; she changes from hating her father to later understanding him more because she can connect to her dad’s struggle with his sexual identity. Alison cannot initially relate to Bruce though both of them are gay because Alison lives in a different time where lesbians and gays were more acceptable in a society. She learns to understand that her father could not reveal his darkest secret because the society around him would not accept him and hence he chose a different path which later led to his death.
The use of the word “minotaur” and “labyrinth” in reference to Bruce and his house is important because it helps us explore the differences and similarities between Bruce and Alison. This is important in understanding their relationship because although Bruce was a terrible father, he stood up for his daughter and supported her when she came out so that she could have a chance to live a life full of happiness. Bruce wants his daughter to have a chance of being with someone she truly loves and who will understand her for what she truly is. Their similar sexuality connects them as a father and a daughter and this helps their relationship evolve. That is why Allison later refers to his father as a beautiful deer late in the memoir. This shows that she no longer sees him as a scary monster but as a beautiful animal as she understands him better now.
Works Cited
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Scott, McCloud. Understanding Comics, Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.
“minotaur, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2017,
www.oed.com/view/Entry/118948. Accessed 27 October 2017.
