Sensation of influence in Fun Home

Sensation of influence in Fun Home

Allison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home details author persona Allison’s journey to realizing her homosexuality, particularly through the lens of her relationship with her father. Bechdel builds the book around her life growing up with her funeral home director/ English teacher father and how her family impacted her life. Allison’s father is reveled through the book to be a closet homosexual and a pedophile and Bechdel attempts to show how his particular affections and manners, in conjunction with these facts, formed Allison’s life. Overall, Bechdel doesn’t give any definable proof or examples of how her father affected her, but rather arrives on more of a sensation of influence in her life overall.

Bechdel uses an excessive amount of intertetuality in her work. Most of this intertexuality is in the form of the literature that Allison’s father reads. From the very beginning of the novel, Bechdel is comparing Allison and her father to Daedalus and Icarus. By using similes, metaphors, and intertexts, Bechdel attempts to give shape to the sensation of influence in her life, both from her father and from other various authors. Bechdel uses a reliance on her reader’s understanding of her intertexts to support this sensation of influence that she leaves mostly undefined.

In the end Bechdel really uses no specifically original material to define her coming of age and identification with sexuality. All of her experience is formed from some indefinable influence that she received from her father, and from texts which she read. Although Bechdel is attempting to give an open view of her past, she hides any real reasoning for her life within the interteuality.

Religous events in Maus

Maus by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel depicting the author’s father’s experience as a jew during the holocaust. Throughout the narrative, Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, tells of many amazing and odd occurrences, not the least of which have religious symbolism or significance. Spiegelman tends to leave his father’s religious war stories open to interpretation, but includes such scenes as the Parshas Truma revelation and the gypsy moth to indicate although it may be random; there is a possibility of higher forces at work even in trauma.

Early in the novel, Vladek recounts a dream that he has in which he is told that he will be let out of a Nazi work camp by a certain date, a religious holiday called Parshas Truma. Vladek claims that although he was not very religious the dream gave him hope, and he went to ask a rabbi how far away Parshas Truma was. He learns that the date is some weeks away and eventually forgets his dream until amazingly on the day of Parshas Truma they are able to leave the Nazi camp. Spiegelman makes no comment on the occurrence through his author-persona.

Later in the novel, Vladek recounts how as the war has finally come to a close his wife, Art’s mother, was waiting for Vladek with little hope that he was alive. Desperate for word of her husband she goes to a Gypsy, represented as a gypsy moth, for any sign of hope. The Gypsy tells her that Vladek is very sick, but that he is coming home and that the two will soon be reunited. This is in fact exactly what transpires shortly thereafter. Again however Spiegelman makes no significant acknowledgement of the event other than simply relating it.

What is most significant in both scenes represented in the novel is Spiegelman’s lack of explanation. The reader is left to wonder if he is impressed with the stories, if he thinks that they are simply fabricated or distorted, or if he finds them significant at all. The best interpretation is to conclude that Spiegelman wanted the reader to decide what these events mean. If he thought that the events were totally without merit and pointless in every respect, it is unlikely that he would have included them, except maybe out of respect for his father. It is more likely that he found them to have some significance which, even if he didn’t wish to or couldn’t define, he still felt was important fot the readers to consider.   

To expose "so it goes."

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five is widely considered a masterpiece of anti-war literature. One of the reasons for this is his use of the phrase “so it goes.”  Vonnegut uses the phrase “so it goes” to ironically comment on the moral evil of war, by understating the impact of death. This use however is ineffective, because for it to be an accurate phrase it would apply not only to moral evils, but also moral goods. Because of this the argument is double sided and self defeating.

            Every time that there is a death in the novel, it is suffixed by the phrase “so it goes.” No matter how violent or passive the death, the phrase is represented. The phrase is supposed to follow the line of thinking of a fictional alien race, the Tralfamadorians, who see time in four dimensions. They say that although a person may have died at one point in time, they are still alive in the past. To this end death is not a cause for sorrow, as the person is still alive somewhere in time. Vonnegut is attempting to understate the value of life, in order to make the reader consider the moral toll that war has. His argument is ill constructed however.

            Only at one time is the phrase used not referring to death, in which case it refers to a man who used to be a runner but has grown so old that he is hospitalized in a wheelchair. Each time Vonnegut uses the phrase it denotes a degradation of man, or, a preconceived moral evil. If Tralfamadorian philosophy is to be believed however one could (and indeed should) use the phrase “so it goes” to refer to morally good things as well as morally evil. If anything morally good happens to a person it makes no difference because somewhere in time, and in fact in most of time, that person will still be in pain or dead. Vonnegut’s argument is a double edged sword.

            One might argue that the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five are simply more optimistic than humans. The problem with this is that Vonnegut was attempting to make a race that had a completely different moral system than that of human. By placing human moral judgment as the core of Tralfamadorian philosophy however he has actually made it so that Tralfamadorians look at morality in the same way as humans do, but only look at time differently. For their philosophy to make sense they would essentially have to either care about everything or care about nothing. Vonnegut ignores this fact and gives them only basis for commenting on moral evil.

Zora Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God depicts the life of an African-American woman named Janie on a life-long quest of self discovery. The novel brings up many interesting themes, like race relations, mankind's desire to judge others, and not least of all gender relations.Throughout the novel, Hurston depicts the male characters as generally weak. Although many work as foils to Janie they each represent certain ways that men will fail their women. Overall each of Janie's husbands; Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake, are used by Hurston to show that men are not trustworthy.

Janie's first husband, Logan is portrayed in almost stereotypical terms for a male character. Janie is forced to marry him by her grandmother, who wants Janie to be well cared for. Janie tries nevertheless to go into the marriage with high hopes, believing that in time she will learn to love Logan. At first things look good,but it is not long before Janie is confronted with disappointment. She finds that "her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her."(26) Logan quickly becomes demanding and even violent. He does whatever he thinks best without so much as a thought to Janie's wishes. On a different level Janie is even disappointed with Logan's physical characteristics. She claims that "his belly is too big too, now, and his toe-nails look lak mule foots. [sic]" (24) Hurston shows how there is no part of a man which can be trusted, weather his empty promises or his fading physical appearance.

Some of the same issues arise in Janie's second husband, Joe. Janie, tired of her unsatisfactory relationship with Logan meets Joe, a wandering near-vagabond, intent on settling in a new city. Janie finds Joe's outlook on life refreshing, and so decides to run off with him. Quite quickly however Janie finds that Joe exerts one of the same problems that Logan had, control. Joe becomes mayor of a new town and establishes a new store, making Janie and Joe rich by comparison to anyone near them. Janie finds however that Joe limits her to little more than a facade. Early on the town calls for Janie to make a public speech, but Joe quickly intercedes, saying that his "wife don't know nothin' 'bout no speech-main'.[sic]" (43) Janie is quietly disturbed by this, feeling as though her voice has been stolen from her. She had trusted that Joe would let her be a new person, but in the end he subjected her to his own reality. Tea cake, Janie's third husband, in the end will reflect some of the same probelms that Janie's first husbands had.

Although Tea Cake at first seems to liberate Janie more, he is characterized by the same problems as Janie's former men. Tea Cake exerts his authority over Janie much in the same way as Logan and Joe had, but he masks it by giving Janie the things that had been denied by them. After stealing some of Janie's money and throwing a wild party, Tea Cake explains not inviting Janie by saying that he "wuz skeered [Janie] might git all mad and quit me for takin [sic]" her to a party with lower class citizens (124). Janie is so disillusioned by what
she believes to be a loving relationship that she forgives Tea Cake and loves him all the more. Tea Cake eventually contracts rabies trying to defend Janie from a rabid dog. He goes crazy and tries to kill Janie, forcing her to defend herself and kill him. Although he was even doing a noble thing, Hurston still uses this to show how a man's power is untrustworthy. A small malady can tear away his love and devotion.

This last point about Tea Cake leaves one question to be asked however, which is weather Hurston is trying to show that man's untrustworthiness  is an evil. Each of Janie's Husbands had problems that made them untrustworthy, but it is through these trials that Janie is able to find her voice. The Janie married to Logan at the beginning of the novel would scarcely be able to defend herself in the same way that the Janie at the end does against Tea Cake. Often the fact that the men were untrustworthy was a fact of their biology or health, not of their personality. In the end however, the main point is that men should not be trusted, weather or not they can help it.

Hedonism is a buch of bull.

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, is a fictional work which details from a first person perspective the journey of a group of writers and pleasure seekers to Spain, where they fish and watch bull-fights. Hemingway derives the title of the novel from a biblical quote which he puts at the beggining of the book, quoting "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abidith forever ... the sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth toward the south..."(7). Using the characters and situations of the book, Hemingway argues that a life solely devoted to pleasure is not only ultimately devoid of meaning. He shows this through the character's use of drinking and their pursuit of purely physical relationships, and uses examples examples from religion in Spain to display how pursing only pleasure will eventually drain meaning from every point of life.

Drinking is a constant throughout the novel. As the group of characters seeks pleasure the use alcohol to subvert any difficult situations they might encounter. In one part a character Mike confronts another, Cohn, for sleeping with his wife. Mike appears to be drunk, so Cohn shakes off the insults and leaves. We learn as soon as Cohn leaves however that Mike was not as inebriated as he was acting, saying "I'm not so damn drunk as I sounded." (147) Although the characters use alcohol as a sort of anesthetic, Hemingway tries to show how in the end it is ineffective, as Brett, the "heroin" of the novel begs the first person voice, Jake in the end not to "get drunk." (250) Brett begs this of Jake because she doesn't want to lose what could be a significant conversation with him. She is tired of how drinking has made every confrontation and every situation meaningless, and she wants to regain some semblance of purpose. This is largely due to her loss of meaning in her pursuit of physically exiting relationships.

Hemingway uses Brett, and her relations with the male characters to display how the pursuit of a purely physical relationship also drains meaning from ones life.Brett is found to have had relationships with nearly every male character at some point. While her relationship with Cohn causes problems with Mike, she is even still looking for more opportunities as she begins to pursue a relationship with a young bullfighter, Romero. At first, Brett finds pleasure in her new relationship. Jake notices how she "was radiant. She was Happy" (211). Brett herself remarks that she feels "altogether changed" (211). In the same way as he used drinking though, Hemingway shows that in the end hedonistic relationships f.all apart and are devoid of meaning. Brett ends up alone and depressed as another relationship crashes back down around her, and as she turns back to Jake, who is the only man that she connects with emotionally.

Brett and Jake have somewhat frequent experiences with religion as the novel progresses. Jake, while not immune to the hedonistic lifestyle of his colleagues, is probably the least affected of them all. For him, there is still some solace to be found in the church. Brett however represents how a pleasure seeking life has not only proved meaningless, but actually drained meaning from other parts of life. At one point in the novel, Brett attempts to enter a church and pray for Romero. After entering she quickly became anxious, saying "let's get out of here. Makes me damned nervous." (212). Brett finds the church an oppressive environment because of her lifestyle. She feels that she "never [got] anything [she] prayed for" (213).  In the end, living a meaningless life had actually made it even more difficult to find meaning where an average person might. Making a dangerous cycle.

This cycle is ultimately Hemingway's point. Just as the sun rises and falls, and just as one generation passes and another begins, in the same way a hedonistic lifestyle is purposeless, and self-perpetuating. In the end it is difficult to tell if Hemingway finds any meaning in life at all. Yet still, there are characters who appear happy, such as the Englishman that Jake meets in Spain. Whether or not there is a certain way to live which would give meaning however does not seem to be the focus of Hemingway's novel. Rather, he seems to point out that there is most certainly a way not to live.