Knots in the tree
One of the things about Alison Bechdel's writing that struck me most was how she writes about her past with the clarity and insight of her present self. The memoir feels like a conversation between her present and younger self. Bechdel often projects her current thoughts onto her memories, noticing details and emotions that she couldn't fully articulate at the time. This makes the story feel very intimate to me, as though she's piecing together the puzzle as we speak.
Her illustrations go hand in hand with this reflective tone. People are rarely smiling and rooms feel heavy with tension even in the most ordinary moments. The muted, blue haze that is Fun Home really conveys a sense of emotional distance and now physical distance that she feels within her family, especially with her father.
Bechdel's approach challenges the idea of life being linear, coming back to the same memories again and again, learning a little more each time. Her memories are like a knot in the trunk of a tree, and she (as one does) grows slowly around it but never out of it. She showed me that we can never recall the past truly as it was, but always through the filter of who we are now. Overall, I think this is a key theme in coming of age, showing that the process never truly ends. Over time, we grow bigger than our memories and experiences, learning to live with and around them. Like a tree that endures drought or extreme heat, which may have smaller rings and stubborn knots, we continue to grow. Certainly shaped by our past but not stopped by it.
Alana, I adore the comparison of our memories to the knot in a tree. It's all kind of mixed up--but clearly distinct when seen from afar. It feels like a knot (as the name suggests) when in the weeds of memory. But it's not actually tangled at all, when seen from far away. As you point out, the knot is circular, something we constantly revolve around. I love that. The image of a circling bird flying around one of my childhood memories comes to mind. It's so good!!! I'll calm down. Great post, Alana! :D
ReplyDeleteHi Alana! I love this sentence :" Her memories are like a knot in the trunk of a tree, and she (as one does) grows slowly around it but never out of it." Though we might not like our past there isn't anything we can do to fix that. We must keep living through it. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteHi Alana! Wow, this is a really cool comparison and one that perfectly fits this "coming of age" narrative. I think it's especially interesting to consider that at the center of the tree knot (when things first occur) it feels scary and uncertain, with no knowledge as to how the larger picture will paint out. However, as time passes, not only does that knot become clearer, but the surroundings also come into view and Alison can see that life did in fact move on, even without her father.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree about how Alison's tone throughout Fun Home was super analytical: one thought about the writing style I had while reading was that it seemed like some big thesis paper that Alison was writing about her archeological examinations of her own life. Your metaphor about her memories being knots in trees reminded me of pearls: oysters and clams get small irritants stuck inside their shells, and develop layer after layer of nacre to protect themselves from it, like Alison's layers of self-reflection and research on her family member's lives, ruminating on their shared memories.
ReplyDeleteHi Alana, you make a great point about how Bechdel's storytelling hinges on aspects of revisiting the past (rather than telling it how it was lived). I agree that her experiences depicted in this way not only give the reader a view of past-Alison's thoughts and memories, but also her current self's response to and elaboration on them. Anyways, great blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Alana! I like your blog, it's really different from the others. I like how you talk about life always being a coming of age in a way because it doesn't stop, and we have to continue pushing through. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteAlana, I love this metaphor for the way that coming of age works. The idea that we grow with new experiences and the revisiting of old memories in a new light makes a lot of sense. I think this book definitely perpetuates this like train of thought, almost, by going back over things again and again and keeping things very disorganized as we revolve around our memories. Lovely blog!
ReplyDeleteYou are identifying the aspect of this narrative's structure that makes it such a uniquely maddening book to teach, or to arrange a focused discussion around: there is an underlying linearity to the narrative, in that the book opens in early childhood and concludes with some of the final moments between Bruce and Alison in Bruce's life, but within that semi-linear structure were are in the realm of time as a flat circle. I like the description of the book as a "conversation" with her own younger self, and I agree--when we see the drawings of young Alison, that's not the "first person" perspective that is telling the story. She is a "character" within her own story, as seen by the author/artist decades later--and this is equally true of her college-age self, which is also pretty far in the rearview mirror at the time the book is written/drawn. I'd say that the book can also be seen as a kind of posthumous conversation with Bruce, although there's a LOT more uncertainty as to what he is thinking in these earlier frames.
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