Metaphors In Fun Home

Over the course of Fun Home, Bechdel characterises her Father in a series of intertextual links to Greek mythology. Her father’s persona is filtered through a triumvirate of mythological figures including, Icarus, Daedalus and the Minotaur. In the novel’s inception, Bechdel first establishes this paradigm in the form of a foreshadowing metaphor which displays the earliest of many periodic parallels that Bechdel forms between her father and Icarus. In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of Daedalus a skilled craftsman and artificer. In the allegorical tale, Daedalus fashioned wings from feathers and wax in the hopes that he and his son would be able to escape the labyrinth. Daedalus suggested that Icarus not fly too close to the sun, nor too

Especially in regard to how Bechdel uses this tool to communicate the complexity of the relationship she shared with her father. It is essential to consider, that within Fun Home the three mythological figures are uniquely antithetical to one another. Icarus is naive and fragile, Daedalus, skilled and prideful, and the Minotaur is an aggressive monster and a half-human hybrid. Therefore, in the process of situating these mythical characters in the biographical context of her father's dilemmas of sexual identity and gender, Bechdel presents an allegory which supplies an overall understanding to her father’s multifaceted character. Her father Bruce is frequently depicted as Daedalus, a skilled artificer who creates a labyrinth in the form of his lavish, gothic revival home. Whilst his pride and fondness for interior design has created this labyrinth, it has equally imprisoned him. He has become the metaphorical embodiment of the Minotaur, a symbolic comparison which Bechdel evokes in her language and descriptions of his cruel and fear-inducing treatment of the Bechdel family. The Minotaur represents the manifestation of Bruce’s closeted homosexuality. It also indicates the way in which Bruce's expression of sexual frustration has created a cycle of cause and effect consequences on his family and most importantly Bechdel