Tag: genre

Image in the novel

The medium by which Fun Home is told is a strange one. It is a self entitled comic, or “tragicomic” on the front cover, and the back cover refers to it as a “graphic memoir”. There are certain elements of the story that change when presented as images with sparse text captions than the bricks of text that typically compose a novel. Some things are gained by adding visuals, for example Bechdel could describe her father’s indifferent and cavalier attitude towards the cadavers, which she does mention, but with the cartoons she can demonstrate how his face and body language is no different expression over a dead body than he does with his family. She could spend chapters upon chapters, if it were written as a text , to describe things: like the house can be represented in a single panel which would’ve taken pages upon pages of writing to get all the specific details of her dad’s excessive collective and restorative efforts, However things are also lost by transferring over to this visual relationship, such as the concept of movement and physical senses besides sight. It’s much harder to express dialogue but easier to demonstrate non verbal cues. I think one important aspect of character then, would be the physical form in which it was created

A play within a plot

When reading the section in Chapter Three on “The Courier’s Tragedy”, I found myself being split on its interpretation. They spend almost 10 whole pages on just retelling the plot with an occasional comment from Oedipa about how it reminds her of her life, so it would seem like it either reflects the plot or is otherwise significant; however, the director of the play rants against trying to find significance in the story, especially against analyzing the written version of it. The plot prior to this point felt convoluted, however the play within the story was seemingly designed to be extremely convoluted, and once again it brings up the question of relevance. Is it’s extremely complex and convoluted plot an indicator of deeper themes or does its parody like feel and needlessly deliberate confusion indicate that it shouldn’t be deeply analyzed as it is intentionally vague. In terms of character, are the characters within the play supposed to be merely characters, or are they supposed to be people in that universe, since Driblette’s reaction to the mere mention of Trystero’s name is extreme and the reaction to the name, the “aura of ritual reluctance here, offstage, as he had on” (62) mean that he has significance for the characters in the book and not just the characters within the play within the book?