Greek Mythology in Fun Home

by Linden

Fun home is a unique memoir in that it uses a wide variety of outside texts to connect with the story. I found a whole list here: It's a diverse selection of texts each having their own relevant connection to themes throughout her coming-of-age battle with grief and sexuality. But these texts do more than flex her literary knowledge. Bechdel writes "I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms. And perhaps my cool aesthetic distance itself does more to convey the Arctic climate of our family than any particular literary comparison." (67). Unfortunately, I am not well read enough to speak on all of these texts, but I do remember reading many Greek mythology stories during my childhood obsession after reading Percy Jackson. 

First, the text employs an allusion to The Odyssey, Homer's classic epic poem about the long journey home of a clever king Odysseus. There are many obvious similarities between the stories: for example, a father being distant for a long time with some infidelity, the father going through a series of trials and tribulations, or the child overcoming their own struggles without their father's guidance. But rather than one simple connection, she implements references in all parts of the story, even an analogy of being behind on homework, which she relates to being trapped by the Lotus Eaters (209). 

In particular, Bechdel illustrates the complexity of this connection in the climax of the story where she confronts her father in the car about sexuality. After unwritten messages through books, she finally has an open conversation about her being lesbian, and in turn, he shares about him being gay. While this is a breakthrough in their relationship, it is by no means perfect; it is quite awkward. She writes "it was not the sobbing, joyous reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus. It was more like fatherless Stephen and Sonless Bloom...having their equivocal late-night cocoa at 7 Eccles Street. But which of us was the father? I had felt distinctly parental listening to his shamefaced situation." (221). Here, she expresses distance from the story of the Odyssey. Homer's classic tale represents simplicity: a hero's journey rather than an anti-hero's, a happy resolution rather than a complicated reunion. But her life is more complicated than a mythic story. Even her role is unclear, whether she is father or son.

She also expresses confusion through comparison with James Joyce's Ulysses. Although I haven't read this modernist novel, it seems that it talks about the daily life of two modern characters with obvious references to the Odyssey. Crucially, although the two main characters' lives are in parallel, they never meet even when they are in the same location. This estrangement is used to describe how Bechdel feels with her father.

Greek mythology is also used to show progress and character development through the story. While the story of Daedalus and Icarus is used in the beginning to show her father's cold, clinical, Artifice. A nod to the same story is given in the end where it says, "What if Icarus hadn't hurtled into the sea? What if he'd inherited his father's inventive bent? What might he have wrought? (continued in picture)

(231-32)

Once again, Allison's role in the story is ambiguous. In the beginning (Page 12), she seems to reference herself as not only the child of the master inventor, but also as the labyrinth itself, or the half-man half-monster created to live in the maze. In either case, she is framed as dehumanized in the face of her father's creative ambition. In the end, she again asks the question of "what if she had lived the feminine life that her father planned?" But then, the narrative switches the roles, showing a picture of the truck that killed her father as Icarus falling in the sea, perhaps saying that hypothetical questions do no good to solve grief. Confusingly, the roles switch yet again, with him catching her as she jumps in the water. In a way, Fun Home is a story of not one coming of age, but two. Both Allison and Bruce went through their own journey as they guided each other through life.