After our class discussion yesterday, I thought I’d look a little closer at Bechdel’s feelings about her father and his suicide. Bechdel obviously yearns for a strong connection to her dad and feels the loss of him keenly.  There’s an early scene of Bechdel getting a bath and she notes that the baths given to her by her father are the ones that she remembers the most:  “The suffusion of warmth as the hot water sluiced over me … the sudden unbearable cold of its absence” (22).  This is about more than hot water, of course.  She was warmed by the attention of her father and chilled when he left her through suicide.

There are many panels that directly address the bond she hopes exists, but which she cannot yet substantiate.  We see this doubt at the top of page 84 when she questions whether telling her parents about being gay is what led to her father’s suicide.  She says that’s illogical, however, because “causality implies connection, contact of some kind … [and] you can’t lay hands on a fictional character”, meaning how can you connect with an illusion.  Page 86 expresses her hope for a connection in a way that is darkly poignant – she wants his death to be about her so that she can hold onto “that last tenuous bond”.  I think her honestly here is amazing – I’m not sure that I could admit to something like that.  Another example comes at the end of the book, when she writes “Perhaps my eagerness to claim his as ‘gay’ … is just a way of keeping him to myself – a sort of inverted oedipal complex” (230).

We see this hopeful yet distant relationship best in the closing panels of most chapters, which often show them together but separate.  For instance, in chapter 3, they are in the same room, but seen through different windows pursuing their own interests (86).  Also, the snapshots of her and her father at the end of chapter 4 show us two different pictures, but highlight their similarities to each other. Chapter 5 is another great example which shows Bechdel and her dad watching a sunset together (150).  The way she is leaning toward him shows her yearning to be close, which sadly is not something he seemed ready to accept.