Synthesis Essay: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.
Marshall McLuhan

Assignment:
The purpose of this, approximately, 4-6 (!!!) page essay is for you to synthesize multiple sources in an exploration of identity in Bechdel’s Fun Home.

What is a Synthesis Essay? Good question. As much as an analysis essay is one critical thinking step past summary, synthesis is one step past analysis. Not only do you

follow the analytical process on one text to generate your own whys and hows, you, additionally, do so on another text. It is from your synthesis of these separate

whys and hows that you create your thesis (dialectics work!)

Your synthesis of this text must explore a source Bechdel cites as influential in the understanding of her or her family’s identity (Greek myth, James Joyce, Marcel

Proust, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, et al). Any member of Bechdel’s family may be analyzed: Alison, Bruce, Helen, the entire family dynamic, or

even the father/daughter dynamic. Go crazy.

When choosing your literary source, know that you can research an actual writer (Oscar Wilde), one of the characters (Dorian Gray), one of the works (The Importance of

Being Earnest), or you may consider any combination of the three. I exhort you, please stay focused within one literary gravity. For example, Wilde/Gray/Earnest is

focused around the gravity of Oscar Wilde, and Woolf/Mrs. Dalloway/Orlando all gravitate around Virginia Woolf.

I recommend the following criteria while writing:
• Make sure your selection of texts is from reputable sources, i.e., use sources with rocksolid ethos (there will be some library-enhanced activities to help

with this).
• I exhort you to consider deep, not broad, analysis. That is, please do not synthesize Fun Home with a little bit of Colette, a dash of Joyce, and one paragraph

of Prost, you know, just for good measure.

Helpful Hints:
•   Your writing must be thesis-driven, but you may need to explore multiple sources while developing this specific thesis.
•   Remember your audience. Don’t assume they know about your sources or topics.
•   This is not the last draft of your paper. Work hard. Think hard. Write harder. But remember, this paper will not be graded. You can always revise.

Freewriting Ideas:

1. Consider Bechdel’s family relationship? In any way can you relate to her childhood? What would Freud say about the dynamics her parents played in her upbringing?

2. Consider the political role of bildungsroman as inspiration for this text. Which identity is Bechdel trying to define and forward into the community of ideas? Why?

What does that have to do with our current cultural paradigm?

3. Have you ever felt your identity is an amalgamation of characters from film or movies? Are you Bart Simpson meets Beyonce meets Bruce Lee? What does this “goals vs.

roles” identity collage-ing say about Western identity in the 21st Century?

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