Fun Home: Do we trust Alison?

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Fun Home is Alison’s attempted reconstruction of her father’s enigmatic accidental death. Throughout the novel, Alison jumps back and forth between understanding it as a random death and a kind of deliberate, maybe even artistic, suicide. Alison narrates in a very analytical tone. She constantly draws on evidence, citing books, pictures, and handwritten letters. Yet, the novel is still characterized by uncertainty. Alison often retells the same event again and again, each time revealing more details, perspectives, and interpretations. An example is her mother's reaction to Alison’s coming-out. At first, Alison recalls her mother telling her “your father has had affairs with other men (Bechdel 58).” Later, as if she had just remembered, she adds on that the victim is Roy, their babysitter (211). This sort of revision to memory makes the narrative more like a puzzle being actively pieced together than a fixed account. This novel isn’t Alison’s theory on Bruce’s death, but her working through Bruce’s death. It suggests that Alison’s telling is shaped by her choices of what to reveal and what to erase. In that sense, her telling is deeply personal and inevitably biased. 

In addition, the book is entirely told from Alison’s perspective, which is penetrated with memories and hindsight. The inaccuracy of someone’s story being told from another's perspective becomes especially obvious in the understanding of Bruce’s first sexual encounter. Alison’s mother describes it as Bruce being molested (58). Yet, Bruce himself describes the experience as “nice (220).” His reminiscence even included details like the man was “well-built” and had “black, wavy hair (220).” The lack of trauma in the language really complicates our understanding of the event. This difference in interpretations shows how easily a storyteller can reshape a narrative to their biases. The difference makes readers question the reality of Bruce's experience. More significantly, it makes readers doubt Alison's narrative. If Bruce’s experiences can be reframed so differently depending on the storyteller, then how much of Alison’s own narrative can we trust? How can readers evaluate how much of her storytelling is distorted by similar biases? How would this story be different if it was told by Alison’s mother or her brothers? 

We, as readers, would never know. Bruce to Alison is like Alison to readers. Alison works with evidence and memories left by Bruce, and we work with stories told by Alison. We are all like the frogs trapped at the bottom of the well. How wide the well is is how much of the world we can see. There are no limitations for us to suspect the scenery of the outer world, the “truth,” but we would never know. 

Thank you for reading :D

Toodles! 

Works Cited:
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. Mariner Books, 2006.

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