The Parallels Between Alison and Bruce's Journey with Sexuality

     In Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, there are parallels in the struggles that Alison and her father, Bruce, experience. They both struggle with identity, more specifically sexuality, but handle it in very different ways. Throughout the novel, Alison gravitated towards self-acceptance and the journey to taking pride in her sexuality. She had the strength to experiment with her identity, read about it in books, and eventually come out to her parents, while Bruce remained hiding behind secrecy and the need to maintain a traditional family image. Their opposing ways of navigating their sexualities not only shaped their personal lives, but also the relationship between them.


     This distinction becomes especially clear when Alison decides to come out to her mother and eventually learns about her fathers secret affairs with young men. A significant moment for her had been overlooked by Bruce's hidden life and the facade of the stereotypical family he had been hiding behind. Alison says “I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents’ tragedy” (Bechdel 58). Bruce's inability to take pride in his sexuality not only affected him, but had also ruined the relationships with the people closest to him. Rather than separately going through their struggles, their stories have intertwined, causing Alison's attempt at opening up to be ruined.


    This tension between Alison and Bruce continues to show throughout the story, specifically when they saw a female truck driver dressed in masculine clothing at a diner during their trip to Philadelphia. This was a pivotal moment of identification for Alison, but her father saw it differently. “Is that what you want to look like?” her father said, insinuating that her identity should be seen as “abnormal” and “unconventional” (Bechdel 118). Rather than using this moment to accept his daughter's identity, Bruce revealed his disagreement for Alison's sexuality, leaving her in an uncomfortable position. 


    The most notable example of the difference between Alison and Bruce's approaches to their sexuality is Bruce's death. As Alison moved towards self acceptance, implying her coming of age journey throughout the novel, Bruce remains trapped in a feeling of isolation and pressure, leaving him unable to come to terms with his identity and causing him to commit suicide. Bruce's inability to accept this important part of himself and open up to those around him caused him to not only isolate him from others, but also from himself. Alison was able to find power in embracing her sexuality, while Bruce's story ended with suppression and tragedy.


    Alison Bechdel uses the parallels between her and her father to show how the concept of identity was handled in their household and how it ultimately affected their relationship. Their differences in the way they handled their journeys with sexual orientation overlapped in ways that complicated both of their lives. Alison's openness and pride in her sense of self may have created jealousy and resentment in Bruce, given that he tried to take away from his own desires by steering her away from being gay. On the other hand, Bruce's secrecy and private relationships led Alison to feel like her big coming-out experience was taken away from her and left her feeling like her journey of self-discovery had been overshadowed. By the end of the novel, Alison is able to live freely knowing that she feels accepted for who she is, whereas the way that Bruce is remembered will be as someone who was never fully able to express who he really was.


Comments

  1. ShriyaApril 4, 2026 at 9:13 AM

    Hi Salma, I agree there was big difference about how Alison and Bruce dealt with their sexuality as Alison being more open compared to Bruce. I do think the timing also mattered as Alison had grown up in a time better support than Bruce did. I do think the book does a great job of showing the similarities and differences between Alison and Bruce and I do think this is one of the biggest difference. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. RuijingApril 5, 2026 at 1:48 PM

    Hi Salma, great blog presenting the differences in Bruce's and Alison's response to their sexuality. I like how you quoted Alison on page 58. I think her word choice of "protagonist" reveals a lot about her acceptance and confidence. She understands herself as rightful in claiming her identity, and those that despise or judge her for her sexuality are in the wrong. And this case is complete opposite for Bruce, who lived his whole life under fear and social expectations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MitchellApril 7, 2026 at 2:35 PM

    Remember that we don't know for sure the circumstances around Bruce's death, and that Alison herself is open about the fact that she WANTS to see this connection between her coming out and him taking his own life (which enables her to couch him as a kind of martyr to the gay-rights movement, a "victim of homophobia"). I've been thinking lately about how relatively friction-free her own coming-out is, as you note--it seems like the logical extension of her entire childhood development, where she reads a handful of books, joins a club at college, gets a girlfriend, and nervously but self-assuredly announces her identity to her parents. The friction comes from her story unexpectedly intersecting with her father's, and even through the end of this book we have to contend with the fact that she actually *prefers* this version of her father's death, it gives HER story some friction, some depth and complexity, to the point where it ultimately doesn't matter what the truth of Bruce's experience might have been. Its truth is only relevant to Alison's own story, and we get the impression that the rest of the family is not as persuaded as she is that his death was not an accident. You are absolutely right that their stories are inextricably bound together; I'm simply pointing out how so much of this inextricability emerges AFTER his death. All of which, of course, just makes those halting movements toward communication and connection at the very end even more haunting. How could she NOT keep thinking in terms of what could have been?

    ReplyDelete
  4. KruthiApril 7, 2026 at 8:39 PM

    Hey Salma, great blog touching on a lot of different important topics! I thought it was really interesting the point you bring up about how Alison's journey with sexuality is impacted and even overshadowed by Bruce's struggles and the depth of his own journey. Not only is she unable to feel proud of her sexuality in her own home, but she is also stuck constantly comparing her story to Bruce's, which attracts much more attention. In some way Bruce's and Alison's stories are parallel and take different courses, but Bruce has a significant impact on how Alison sees herself and her sexuality.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holdens Definition of "Phoniness" and How He May Be Phony Himself

  One of the first things that Holden Caulfield makes clear in The Catcher in the Rye is his hatred for “phonies.” To him, phonies are people that pretend to be someone they're not. Throughout the book, he has a hard time trusting people over small things like going to watch a movie, showcasing their talents, reminiscing about their high school years, or going to an Ivy League, because he sees these things as “performative.” He tends to have very high expectations for people, but as a reader it makes me question: does he even meet his own expectations? Throughout the novel, Holden demonstrated controversial behaviors, where he criticizes people for doing something, and then judges them negatively for not doing it. One example is when Holden condemns people for putting too much effort into their physical appearance and caring too much about how they look. He observes Stradlater from across the room and goes on to talk about how “he always looked good when he was finished fixing hi...
Read more

Jason's Struggle with Identity

     In Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, Jason Taylor struggles to find his identity while going through the battles of fitting into societal expectations. Throughout the novel, Jason hides important parts of himself that he wishes to embrace, in order to avoid getting bullied. His fear of standing out led him to create a standard, less-authentic version of himself only to be granted approval by others. Jason's experiences reveal how, sometimes, our identity does not only reflect who we are, but also how others expect us to be.      One crucial component of Jason's true identity is his passion for poetry, but it is kept hidden. He hides behind the name “Eliot Bolivar” because he is afraid of being judged or seen as “weird” by his peers. While he sees poetry as a pastime and a way to express the thoughts that he cannot say outloud, he separates this passion from his public life and does not feel confident enough to reveal that aspect of his personality. T...
Read more

Crossing The Threshold

Sylvia Plath's, The Bell Jar, ends in a powerful yet uncertain scene where Esther Greenwood is crossing an imaginary threshold that determines whether or not she is qualified to leave the asylum. Not only is she consumed by fear, but also by the likelihood that she won’t be able to be let out. This moment holds all that she has experienced and has yet to discover. Throughout the novel, Esther undergoes a whirlwind of emotions from the moment she stepped into New York City for her summer internship, to her last possible moments at the Belsize asylum. Through her ups and downs, she finds herself annoyed by society's standards pushing her to be someone she is not. In New York, she felt pressured to be the stereotypical teenage girl that goes to parties and drinks. At home in Massachusetts, she was expected to be the perfect, accomplished daughter that followed societal expectations and wrote in shorthand to showcase the intelligence that she was expected to have. The pressure she ...
Read more