Fun home prep #4

Chapter 7 of the book talks about “The Antihero’s Journey” as it relates to Alison’s father. He wasn’t a particularly nice person, and in fact he was very flawed. He did things that isolated himself from others and made others feel isolated or even like a bird in a cage. He wasn’t expressive and in fact hid so much of who he was and how he felt. He treated his children as furniture and his furniture as his children  and went to great lengths to control how people saw him. He was flawed but he was also complicated. Chapter 7 showed that Bruce’s relationship with Ailson as father and daughter was intellectual. In some ways he was a proud father from the shadows. The few times he did express himself, it was through getting excited recommending books to her with LGBTQ authors to help her understand the course material better. Little did he know that Ailson wasn’t doing so well because she was in fact choosing to read books like that over her assignments. She notes that “The Antihero’s Journey” is a part of a book called Ulysses by James Joyce which he had to read for her college course. She compares the antihero protagonist to her father. He may have had parts of him where he was not only less than ideal but just wasn’t able to live up to in terms of being an expressive or affectionate father, but he did have redeeming qualities about himself. At one point he even talks about how his experiences being with other men to her and this excites her and then takes her to a gay nightclub. She was disappointed and her excitement was short lived but at the end of the day, to the extent that he could, Bruce tried to redeem himself and be more personable. He just had a different way of showing it and is afraid of being open because of judgement or disappointment that he possibly feels towards himself.