Thoughts on Bruce and Alison
Thoughts on Bruce and Alison
By Mateo Hernandez
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was, in a sense, a change of pace and perspective, compared to novels like The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar. It featured hand-drawn art by Bechdel herself, and was a memoir of sorts, a story about discovering things about her father, Bruce, that she’d never known. It’s an extremely complex novel that dives deeply into touchy subjects about sexuality and identity, and the pain of not being able to ever know the truth. Throughout the novel, Bechdel attempts to create a reality in which her coming out as a lesbian is related to her father's death, and she suggests that her father may have taken his own life because of this event. But in reality, Bechdel is creating a false truth, as the evidence for a suicide is simply not substantial, and her interpretation may reflect her search for reconciliation and meaning.
To begin with, the evidence for a suicide is ambiguous. At the start of chapter 2, Alison admits that there is no real proof that he killed himself, and just to be clear, Alison never specifically admits that she believes that he killed himself; she simply speculates that there is some deeper connection between her coming out and, within a few weeks, her father dying. In her own words, Bechdel claims that there are “some suggestive circumstances. The fact that my mother had asked him for a divorce two weeks before” (Bechdel 27). She also states the fact that he’d been reading a copy of Camus’ A Happy Death and leaving it around the house in a “deliberate” manner. The novel is about a “consumptive hero who does not die a particularly happy death” (Bechdel 28). The idea of a heroes journey is brought up early in the novel, but develops to have some kind of general idea that Alison has in a sense completed her heroes journey, by coming out and becoming a successful writer, while Bruce was an anti-hero, who embarked on his journey, but failed to come out, and lived a life of sin in secrecy. For some reason, going back to this point of the novel with a lot more knowledge and context, I think of Bruce as a hero doomed from the beginning. It’s almost as if he was destined to fail; society was against him. But would anyone in his shoes have done better? We are all on our own journeys, specifically ones where we are supposed to come of age, and hand in hand with coming of age, we are supposed to find our identity. Alison is very clear that Bruce found his identity, but he didn’t take that next step. So did he end his life because he wasn’t able to take that next step? Or because of the divorce? Or was it all an accident? The truth will never be revealed.
I don’t want this to stretch too long, but even though Alison claims that she wasn’t close with her father for most of her life, the tides changed, and in the last few weeks of her father's life, she began to get close to him. When Alison reaches college, she decides to take English classes, which is a key bonding point between the father and daughter. Bruce shares old copies of books that he had in college and gives her a long list of novels to read, some even touching on lesbian experiences, before Alison came out... There is a section where Alison visits home after she finds out from her mother that Bruce was gay and had relations with many men. Between pages 220 and 221, 24 panels fly by, a final memory between Alison and Bruce that is engraved into her mind. She wants to hear from him about his secret life. One that had never been shared and only known to a few. Alison says, “I wondered if you knew what you were doing when you gave me that Colette book” (Bechdel 220). Bruce replies, “It was just a guess” (Bechdel 220). Bruce goes on to say that his relations with 2 men were nice, and that when he was young, he wanted to be a girl, and dressed in girls' clothes. The scene ends in silence, but with countless thoughts swirling between both of their minds.
In the end, Bruce clearly never comes of age, but knows who he thinks he is, and lives a seemingly sad life of regret and guilt. In the last few weeks of his life, it’s clear that he knows that Alison won’t have that same kind of life after coming out, and he’ll never get to know what that life is like. He searched for meaning in all the wrong places and, in a tragic accident, died, never making amends. The things that life throws at us will always come at the wrong time, and we can’t control everything, but we have to ground ourselves in reality and truth. We’ll never know if Bruce killed himself or not, but we do know some things. It seemed like he was becoming more open and that his relationship was strengthening, but one thing is for sure. Bruce never came of age, and that is something that will haunt Alison forever.
Works Cited:
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. Mariner Books, 2006.
Hey Matteo! To start off, I liked how you focused on the uncertainty around Bruce instead of trying to force one definite answer, because that feels really true to Fun Home (also what my post is partially about). Your point that Alison may be creating meaning out of something she can never fully prove made your post feel thoughtful and honest. I also thought your idea that Bruce knew who he was, but could never really fully live it was a really powerful yet sad connection. I wonder if you think Alison is more driven by guilt when she makes that connection, or by a need to make sense of something she knows she can never fully explain. Overall, great blog Matteo!
ReplyDeleteHey Mateo! I liked how you framed Bruce as someone who found his identity but just never took that next step because I think that is a really important distinction. It is easy to assume he never figured himself out but he clearly did and just could not do anything with it. The part about those 24 panels between Alison and Bruce near the end was also really interesting to think about because so much is being said and not said at the same time. Good post!
ReplyDeleteHello Mateo! I think it is interesting that you argue that Bruce never came of age. I disagree slightly, only because a big part of Alison's Coming of Age story was coming out as Lesbian. I believe Bruce did know who he was, he just made the wrong choices associated with that. So I feel as if Bruce did come of age, just not in a similar arch as Alison.
ReplyDeleteHello Mateo,
ReplyDeleteThis was a very thoughtful analysis of Bruce's tragic life and passing! I agree with you that Alison's initial thought of Bruce's death being directly caused by her coming out was misguided, but I do think that Alison's coming out had at least something to do with it. I personally believe that Bruce's death was due to suicide; as you pointed out, there were just too many things lining up around that time for it to have been a simple accident. But the crucial phrase there is "too many things." It clearly wasn't just Alison; there was also the issue of him and Helen's divorce coupled with a lifetime of built-up regret. Things were accelerating very quickly, eventually culminating in Bruce's untimely death. And, as you said, accident or not, his passing brought a switft end to whatever development he may have been going through, leaving his coming-of-age forever unfinished. Great post overall!
Hello Matty Boi, your blog gives a very thoughtful take on Bruce Bechdel and Alison's perspective about it, highlighting the ambiguity about Bruce's death and how Alison does not really try to look into creating the meaning rather than uncovering the truth behind it. Referencing a Happy Death really helped to support your ideas, using the idea that Bruce is much more of a broken hero than an outright villain really helped to add more depth to your analysis. Good Job!
ReplyDeleteI probably sympathize with Alison so much because there's this sense that her relationship with her father is suddenly evolving in new directions right at the end of his life (even before her coming-out announcement). This sense of a lost opportunity for her to solidify this closeness with him must compound her grief and the sense that their relationship is left unresolved, and on some level, it must be simply hard to sit with the idea that his death is totally meaningless, absurd, accidental, AND it has such huge consequences for her life. She's pretty open about the fact that her "certainty" about her father's death as a suicide that has something to do with her is not a fact-based analysis but a *projection*, something she *wants* to believe, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. And this too is something she shares with her father--a willingness to let fiction and reality overlap to the point where they are indistinguishable. (But it is important to remember that all of our "evidence" to question Alison's account ALSO comes from her--she provides readers with the means to challenge or doubt her own version of events.)
ReplyDeleteHi Mateo, I love how you mentioned the uncertainty in Bruces story: from his death to his relationship with big Al to his final stance on his life. A powerful message in the end of the book is that past regrets can't be controlled, but it is important to come to terms and accept yourself.
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