A significant aspect explored by Alison Bechdel in Fun Home is her relationship with her father, Bruce. Throughout her childhood, there appears to be constant friction between Bechdel and Bruce and she applies the Daedalus-Icarus metaphor to describe her relationship with her father. However, when Bechdel discovers that her father is an out gay man, she tries to understand her open lesbian identity in relation to her identity, realizing that the mythical metaphor doesn't actually hold up. In the centerfold of Fun Home, Bechdel includes a double-page spread of a photograph of her babysitter Roy, taken by her father, whom she meets after Bruce's death. As she tries to look at the photo through Bruce's eyes, she feels connected to him. This crucial moment divides the text into two parts and allows Bechdel to revisit and re-characterize his relationship with his father in the second part after having already characterized it in the first part. Thus, the recursive nature of Bechdel's narrative, chronologically fragmented by the use of repetition, allows Bechdel to re-examine her relationship with her father in terms of the mythical metaphor she applies to it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Bruce's sudden death before Bechdel can begin to explore her relationship with him leads to her having to find the means to understand his identity after his death. Bechdel discovers her father's sexual identity through a telephone conversation with her mother while coming out as a lesbian. This is a shock to his system, but then he realizes that he shares a deeper bond with his father than he expected as they both face a sexual identity crisis. One of the ways he explores Bruce's identity is through photographs, particularly the photograph his father takes of Roy and encounters after his death. The non-chronological structure and recursive narrative of Fun Home lead Bechdel to place this moment of connection at the core, or center, of the text rather than at the end. It serves as a crucial point in the book, after which his employment of the Daedalus-Icarus myth as a metaphor for his relationship with his father is seen with a renewed perspective. The shift in perspective occurs after she realizes her connection to her father, and thus restores her sexual identity to the right place in her memory before re-examining their relationship. This allows her to juxtapose her interpretation of the Daedalus-Icarus myth metaphor relating to her and her father before and after learning and understanding his sexual identity. Therefore, place these panels before and after the crucial moment respectively. Roy's photograph is visual and material evidence of the parallel life Bruce had lived. Emphasizing the photo's ability to upset his family, which was what Bruce had feared all his life, Bechdel places the strips of negatives depicting her and her brothers playing on the beach immediately after Roy's photo. However, the proximity of these seemingly disparate images offers evidence of his father's simultaneous presence in two different worlds. Roy's image is given much more emphasis by enlarging it to twice the size of the thin panel depicting the strips of negatives that appear on the next page. This describes the fact that her father's real life and identity lay in the life he was trying to hide, his life as a closeted gay individual, not the “ideal husband and father” (17) he appeared to be. By placing Roy's image on the centerfold, Bechdel acknowledges the importance of her father's hidden identity in understanding herbehavior during her childhood memories and, subsequently, her relationship with him in the past. The various visual elements of the image highlight its emotional aspect. meaning. The frame includes Bechdel's hand holding the image, creating the sense that she is trying to see through her father's eyes. Relying on the aesthetics of photography to find its deeper meaning, Bechdel says, “The blurring of the photo gives it an ethereal, painterly quality. Roy is golden by the morning light of the sea. Her hair is a halo." This description of the image in a text box shows that Bechdel sees the photograph framed by her father's sexual desire. When she finds the photograph, she seems to be able to connect with the man behind the camera and the fact that he is able to make this connection through the photograph surprises her. She acknowledges that "the photo is beautiful" and wonders why she is "not appropriately outraged" as she might be if the photo were instead of a seventeen-year-old girl. He says, “Perhaps I identify too well with my father's illicit awe.” The connection arises from Bechdel's awareness that she and her father have an "inverted Oedipus complex," which she talks about in the final pages of the book. Because of this complex, she sees that “while [she] was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him, he was trying to express something feminine through [her].” Immediately before Roy's image, Bechdel time-shifts to when she was a child and describes her father's shared interest in an image of a young man posing in an Esquire magazine fashion magazine: She wants the I live, while his father wants the boy. , and awaiting the scene that follows, there is another series of layered glances as he holds the magazine in his hand and his father looks at the image over his shoulder. Roy's image inverts this structure as Bechdel draws herself holding the photograph that gives her access to what her father saw, as if she were looking over his shoulder. In both cases, he cannot separate himself from his father's sexuality. Bechdel's first extended consideration of his relationship with his father, through a reference to the Daedalus-Icarus myth, appears at the very beginning of Fun Home – this first consideration is how Bechdel perceived their relationship as he was growing up. One of the first scenes depicted in Fun Home is that of Bruce balancing a nine or ten year old Bechdel on his foot, in a version of the game "Airplane". Bechdel visually depicts himself as "bouncing", thus describing the legend of Icarus traditionally with itself in the Icarus, the overly ambitious position. Just as Icarus is trying to get closer to the sun, Bechdel is trying to experience closeness with his father; and just as Daedalus warns Icarus not to get too close, Bruce too seems closed off to Bechdel's efforts to get close to him. He describes the position he is balancing in as uncomfortable, but "worth the rare physical contact" he has had with his father. Bechdel takes this metaphor further and compares Bruce to Daedalus, as he describes how he is more interested in restoring the house than his own children. He is so caught up in his project that he fails to recognize his role as a father towards his children; rather, he uses them as 'hands' to help him in his projects: "Even Daedalus was indifferent to the human cost of his projects." We see Bechdel's lack of connection with her father, as she is unable to understand his obsession with his restoration project. Bruce's obsession with a perfect exterior stems from the fact that he is ashamed of his sexual identity; he tries to protect his family by keeping the fact that he is gay hidden. Bechdel says:“He used his skillful artifice not to create things, but to make things appear to be what they were not. That is, impeccable." By attempting to portray his family and home as ideal, Bruce is trying to compensate for the shame he feels and fears that his family's image may be ruined in society due to him being gay. Bruce's shame over his sexual identity leads him to fear the fact that his daughter is a lesbian, instead of supporting her. Thus, while he tries to force Bechdel to have “pink flowered curtains” in her room, as if imposing femininity on her, there is friction between the two, because Bechdel does not know her father's hidden gay identity. Bruce is so afraid of people finding out he's gay that he tries to make his family seem perfect, placing Bechdel within the stereotypical confines of being a girl. Bechdel feels like her father is limiting her, just as Daedalus tried to keep Icarus from flying too close to the sun for his own good. Daedalus advises Icarus to prevent his fall; in Fun Home, it is not immediately clear in the first reference to the myth how exactly Bruce is "saving" or "helping" his family through his obsession with outward appearances. However, when Bechdel returns to the myth at the end of the text, after the crucial point of connection, it finally falls into place. The panel depicted at the end of the text is very similar to the one depicted at the beginning; in both images Bechdel lies above her father, with her arms outstretched, as if she were flying. Bechdel ends his story with the sentence: “He fell into the sea, of course. But in the complicated reverse narrative that animates our intertwined stories, he was there to catch me when I jumped.” She realizes that Bruce has been there for her throughout her life much more than she thought, and so she needs to recreate her childhood memories with this new understanding. Before the crucial moment when Bechdel finally understands his father's actions, he characterizes himself as Icarus and his father as Daedalus. Icarus' inability to escape due to the melting of his wings can be compared to the lack of connection Bechdel feels as a child in her relationship with Bruce. However, she says, “In our particular reenactment of this mythical relationship, it was not I but my father who was to fall from the sky.” Here, Bechdel is suggesting that her relationship with her father, in retrospect, did not actually follow the path of the relationship between Daedalus and Icarus and the metaphor deteriorates as both can occupy the position of Icarus, but unlike Icarus, they are released from their respective roles "prison" successfully without drowning in the panel to highlight the sudden death of his father just as they begin to open up to each other, just like the sudden death of Icarus as he flies. However, unlike Icarus' death, which happens in a moment in which he feels freer while flying near the sun, Bruce's death is a form of liberation for him, as during his life he is limited by the fact that he cannot be open about his sexual identity Bruce dies shortly after she she says she is a lesbian and comes to know that he is gay through a telephone conversation with his mother. Since she doesn't have time to explore her relationship with him while he's alive, her only way to do so is to re-examine her existing memories of him. Bechdel realizes that her father was actually there for her even though she didn't recognize him. Before. Just as Daedalus gave wings to Icarus as an opportunity to escape, Bruce also gives "wings" to Bechdel by introducing her to the world of literature, so that she can explore and understand her identity as a lesbian. He suggested she read the autobiography of Colette, a proud lesbian. A.