The Past Comes Back To Haunt You

Fun House by Alison Bechdel is a graphic novel based on her life and crazy family.  It's full of metaphors and subliminal messages, causing the reader to need to constantly observe the panels.  In the first 50 pages, she explains how life with her father was.  She then begins to touch on how her father's death affected her.  What she doesn't seem to realize is that her past is her present.  She is a lot more like her father than she sees.  

The past is an important element in this graphic novel. It is constantly popping up in both her words and images.  For example, on page 53 she says that there is "some fleeting consolation in the sheer violence…" This is ironic since she used to shudder at the idea of violence.  Her father was violent with her and her siblings when they were younger.  On page 18, she shows the reader her father's unreasonable violence. In the illustration, she is saying "But I didn't do anything!" Her brother holds onto their mother while crying his eyes out. 

In another pair of panels, the past comes up again.  Her grandmother tells her a story about how her dad got "stuck in the mud" (pg. 40).  The kids loved that story and it would make them happy.  Ironically, that is what Alison refers to on the last page of the second chapter.  She says that he's "stuck in the mud of good this time." (pg. 54) 

These are a couple of the many panels where the past comes up. It's ironic how she saw her dad as more of a negative figure than a positive one, and yet she becomes more like him every day.  She is a lesbian and her father was gay.  They both begin to feel comfortable with violence.  She even refers to his mud story on the very last page of chapter 2.  The past is literally coming back to haunt her.