Respondant to “A Tragedy Off Your Chest”

I take slight issue with Bechdel’s determination that “Fun Home” is a tragedy. While reading it, there was something about the story that I couldn’t quite peg, but kept me from really considering it a tragedy. After we watched the interviews with her in class, however, it became clear to me what that issue was. In the story, Bechdel (as the main character, moreso than as the writer, and even less so as the artist) never truly expresses saddness; rather she spends the story circling the drain of melancholia. In order to be a tragedy, something truly tragic must happen, and she just never truly convinces me that her father’s death affected her. Upon seeing the interviews with her, I realize that that is because of her general disposition, which has her displaying a very limited range of emotion. Without access to this point of reference while reading “Fun Home,” the standalone story is hard to catagorize as a true ‘tragedy.’ As the main character, Bechdel is very passive, unlike Marjane Satrapi of Persepolis, who tends to overreact in an animated fashion. As the writer of the story, however, Bechdel offer’s an almost mechanical analysis that is peppered with references; the powerful feelings associated with the characters from those references allows her to express a wider range of emotion than her character is typically capable of. Also, as an artist, her painstaking attention to detail fits perfectly with the melancholic; the clean lines and complex detail sanitizes the appearance of her world. However, it is the art where Bechdel expresses a fuller ranger of emotion, as the attention to detail shows her loving passion for the history that she captures in the graphic novel. Ultimately, as a standalone story, “Fun Home,” simply can not stand up as its own tragedy; the beauty of the graphic novel medium, however, is that through the artwork we have access to other means of interpreting the story. I daresay that even with all things considered, Bechdel’s story is simply not dynamic enough to be truly called ‘a tragedy.’