I Think... That Alison's OCD Episode Was Related To How She Dealt With Her Father's Death
OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, is an illness characterized by uncontrollable repetitive behaviors or thoughts. In Fun Home, Alison reminisces on how her OCD episode affected her as a ten-year-old. Her uncontrollable fear of lying in her diary causes her to doubt her own senses and thoughts, and to rectify this, she writes "I think" before every sentence. Eventually, "I think" becomes too long of a word for Alison to write, resulting in her colloquializing "I think" as an upside down Aries symbol. The later diary entries become almost unsettling because of how much they are consumed in doubt. On the weekend where she sees the body of a boy her age at the funeral home, the "I think" symbol takes over the entire page.
I found it particularly poignant that her compulsions are at their worst after seeing such a stark image of death. The corpse caused her such uncertainty and nervousness that she hit the peak of her obsessiveness with being objective, unable to make sense of it. The episode that came with the image of death reminded me of a larger theme in the story: the confusion that Allison feels over Bruce's death. The plot of Fun Home itself could be considered as more of a speculation on what her father's life was like rather than objective truth. In Alison's childhood, Bruce had forced her both directly and indirectly to take on roles that she didn't want. He makes her dress traditionally feminine, makes her see a man's corpse as some kind of tolerance test, and often she's pushed into the parental role despite being a child. Alison spends her childhood being resentful of her parents' distance, but as she becomes older and ironically moves further away, her and Bruce's relationship begins to rebuild. After his death and the discovery he was gay, Alison's emotions became even more complicated. Her reality as a child became twice as complex than what she initially thought. Was he a tragic victim of homophobia or a maliciously abusive predator? Was he forced into distance by repression or was he an emotionally absent father? Was his death a suicide or a freak accident?
Alison tries to make sense of Bruce's life by interpreting it through literature and her own parallels to her father. Both tried to compensate for a traditional gender role that the other lacked, but Bruce was only able to force Alison vicariously into it while Alison was able to express her masculinity in adulthood. The primary way that they could connect to each other was via books. One of the only ways that Bruce shows his child affection is by giving her reading recommendations. She associates Bruce's life with the plots of the literature they would discuss, trying to create her own narrative to make sense of her complicated father. Alison is able to see Bruce's parallels to her posthumously, which makes her reflection of him more biased. Similar to the body of the boy, the death of her father makes Alison question her perception of the world. As a ten-year-old, it was a subconscious urge manifesting through her OCD because her only connection to the boy was through age, while as an adult she carefully crafted a storyline around Bruce's life to attempt to make sense of his death.
As she gets older, her speculations raise concerns about whether she's reading too much into it. Also, she has evidence for her speculations, but it is not concrete. It's interesting how trying to make sense of his death provides some sense of comfort for her. It shows she can't accept his death and how somewhat highly she viewed her father, as someone who she thought had complete control of his life (and of others such as Alison), such as in death.
ReplyDeleteWowza Adrian! How is your blog raining. How do I make my blog rain. Uhm but yeah about the actual blog post I AGREE! Alison's OCD developing into this perhaps less recognizable fixation through literature on such a difficult subject is really interesting. Good on you for highlighting the fact that Alison saw a dead body at the ripe age of ten because I had completely forgotten that. That feels like something one should not forget. Was there ever a reason the "I think" marking looked like that? I wonder about it...it kind of...looks like an arrowhead.
ReplyDeleteHi Adrian! Throughout the book, I didn't pay attention to her OCD as much, but your blogpost makes me feel like I should have. I also found it quite sad of how much her later diary entries were written in doubt. Great job!
ReplyDeleteHi Adrian, 1) please please teach me how to put GIFs on my blog at some point this is really cool ?? 2) I liked how you interpret Bruce's death through Alison's OCD, and how you point out that we actually don't know what happened during Bruce's life/death, we just know about Alison's analysis and interpretation of it. He might legitimately have just died by truck. The point that Alison's OCD might have been triggered by his death, and the complexities of everything kind of overwhelm her is really good. I do think it's interesting how she changes herself after he dies and begins to question her own perception of the world.
ReplyDeleteHi Adrian! The way you compare her childhood diary entry OCD to how she responded to her father's death makes perfect sense to me. I love your analysis here because I honestly think the entire book could have her "I think" symbol on it because she's largely making assumptions that her father never actually affirmed. The things we seem to know as facts: her father dying of suicide, being gay, having affairs, are barely (or never) confirmed in the book. Perhaps this shows that she's better able to manage her OCD as she's aged, however, because she does portray the narrative she believes to be true with much certainty. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Adrian! I agree that Alison's OCD is shown in her obsession of literature. It makes sense that her father's death would spark something in her mind that could create that obsession with literature as a way to link them together and made them more close. I also believe that her "I think" symbol came from the environment of her home making her feel confused whether anything would be right or not. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that Alisons OCD had a huge impact on how she processed grief and her father passing. Its interesting that while she had to use 'i think' in her own diary because she didn't want to possibly make a false claim, while she also is so certain that her father's death was a suicide. I think it makes a lot of sense she hyper focused on learning and figuring out her fathers double life and passing as a way to make sense because there are so many unanswered questions. Its good to keep in mind her motivations here since its hard to question her when she speaks with such certainty.
ReplyDeleteI really like the connection between the emergence of young Alison's radical epistemological skepticism (undercutting all apparent statements of fact in her diary with "I think") and that first sight of a corpse at the fun home: indeed, it is here that we see the link between this radical uncertainty and the eternal mysteries around death (in this case, the cold fact that Bruce's intentions can likely never be known or understood through any reconstruction of events or analysis of evidence). It's like every mention of "my father's suicide" in the book should come with a giant "I think" symbol, but by the time she is constructing this memoir, Bechdel is much more comfortable with this uncertainty. We have a lot of reason to doubt her interpretation of events, and it can seem morbid to obsess over why he might have "jumped like he saw a snake" or why he would have noted a particular bird sighting in his dictionary a few days before. But we have to remember that Alison Bechdel is ALSO our source for these skeptical interpretations as well--she does do "full disclosure," and she is quite open about the fact that she WANTS to see this connection between herself and her father. So the "I think" symbol maybe needs to be amended to depict "I *want to* think."
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