Example Of Fun Home Reading Journals Literature Review

Fun at home is a novel with medium popularity as it allows the reader to look at the character's developing prejudice in unusually cherished technique. Despite the fact that it places the reader to view the subject's experience and thoughts, the author places the readers in the scenes as the beholder, giving them a chance to look at both the cultural forces and the subjectivity of the narrator that molded her. Fun at home focuses on Alison's family and revolves around her relationship with Bruce, her father. Bruce worked as a high school teacher and funeral home director.
Various themes arise from the novel such as sexuality and concern of parents to their children especially the fatherly care. The novel begins by Bruce exhibiting obsession while trying to restore his family. His obsessive nature is associated with his emotional distance from the family. On the other hand, this emotional distance is associated with Bruce being a closeted homosexual. Bruce had homosexual relationships with his high school students, and the behavior continued when he was at a military base. He is not a concerned father at all, he portrays lack of concern and he cares less about his family.
Alison struggle with her sexual identity, especially on her realization that she was a lesbian. Alison's lesbianism started when she was still young as she anecdotes about masturbation with her girlfriend, Joan. Lesbianism is one of the themes that comes out in the novel. On top of that both had a common homosexuality behavior, Alison and her father shared obsessive-compulsive inclination and albeit leanings. In essence, as she grows Alison and her father are both struggling with their gender responsibilities.
It is clear that some of the struggles were public as Alison refuses to grow her hair long, her reluctance to put on dresses, jewelry and skirts. However, some aspects like Alison's resentment of breast development and her father's affair with men is slightly concealed. As much as she did not fully realized until she joined college, Alison and her father spent their life struggling with the realization of their sexual orientation. Theis is evident with their efforts with gender roles, but never mentioned during her childhood. Alison's close desire for women and her father's close desire for men stood as a common bond. .
However, when Alison came out to her parents, her mother openly made her aware that her father had homosexual affairs, she was shocked to hear. Alison views Bruce not as a father but a distant man.
Unlike Other fathers, the passion of Bruce is never resided in his children or wife, he is in his own world. Again the concept of care and concern for the family by a father is not clearly shown. In fact, he never shows any emotional or physical endearment but instead he was quick to anger and in most cases physically abusive. Indeed, he is not a responsible father who takes a good care of his family.
The novel revolves around the wide themes of homosexuality, fatherhood and gender roles. Alison narrates her story into a single piece that is almost complicated as her childhood itself. The reader is only able to understand the full meaning at the end of the story. Both Alison and her father struggled with gender roles as they were trying to realize their homosexuality; it is clear that homosexuality made her father act when she was still a young girl.
Before her father died, he confessed to her all his sexual history; this is described as the resolution to the conflict between the daughter and her father. At several instances in the novel, Alison tries to ask if her decision to become as lesbian is one of the factors that caused her father's suicide. However, this question is not relatively answered, but she examines the connection between her father's closest sexuality and her open lesbianism and, therefore, revealing her debt to her father both negatively and positively.
In essence, the themes of lesbianism and parental care as well as concern dominates the whole story in Fun Home, which to a large extent shows the consequences of division in a family.