Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Extending our Socratic Seminar on "Old Father, Old Artificer" by Alison Bechdel





Extend. Explore. Examine. Respond. Revisit. Revise. Analyze. Synthesize. Write.
(Focus particularly on specific scenes, panels, or techniques that we didn't talk about but that relate to things we did talk about. Or, focus on new (or revised) ways of thinking about specific scenes, panels, or techniques that we've already talked about. Or, make specific, insightful connections between this work and others. Think of the guiding questions for your annotations. You might also think about the guiding questions for the unit: What makes personal narrative writing successful? How can we use personal narrative writing to better understand our surroundings, our relationships, and our selves?)
Make sure you write something that feels substantial--something well-developed not perfunctory.

Image from Fun Home by Alison Bechdel copied from The Guardian



26 comments:

  1. Building on the use of Icarus and Daedalus, I noticed on page 258 in the first panel: “In our particular reenactment of this mythic relationship, it was not me but my father who was to plummet from the sky.” This box foreshadowed the later question of whether Daedalus (the author) was merely disappointed by the design failure of his wings or if he was stricken with grief due to the death of his son. Whether we realized it or not, Bechdel had planted that idea in our minds far before we reached page 266.

    To extend the idea that his house was his shell rather than his pride, I noticed that even when the father’s work was admired, he was still depicted with a scowl. Yes, he wanted the house to appear perfect, but it was not out of a desire to impress but rather to deflect attention. The better his house looked, the less likely people would be to think he was anything less than the quintessential loving father. I noticed this on page 260, when the father’s sister considers his arrangement techniques “Amazing!” yet maintains the tight scowl. The author even writes with a tone of awe as she describes her father’s ability to turn “garbage into gold”. Yet, the scowl remained unchanged. This displays that his decoration of the house was less of a hobby that brought pleasure but more of an compulsion that appeased his insecurities. It was as if he thought his secret would be discovered if he did not work on the appearance of his house enough. The bottom slide of page 260 underscores this idea with the titles “an Alchemist of Appearance, a Savant of Surface, a Daedalus of Decor.” No matter how hard he tried, all he could change was his exterior. His conflict was merely hidden from public view, festering within him.

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  2. One topic the class did not discuss today was the technical factor of Bechdel’s writing - how did she incorporate kid-friendly aspects into what was a darker plot, visually and in her writing? Of course, we discusses the symbolisms in the chapter and their significance in relation to the main idea of Bechdel’s writing, but her unique delivery of the main ideas is important, too - after all, an author’s hope is to have their writing read by many, which will only happen if the story is delivered in a way that “works” (in her case, in a way that youth will enjoy). Obviously, firstly, Bechdel chose comic-format for her story - a clearly kid-friendly type of display. Comic strips allow not only for captivating illustrations, but for short sentences. Short sentences allowed for Bechdel to use blunt statements and some merely subtle insights - many of which incorporate lightness to balance the dark themes. For example, the author adds lots of information regarding her house. Of course, the construction and upkeep of the house have a strong relation to her father as a person, however, on the surface, they’re simultaneously providing simple “filler content” on the surface for the first read. The comic format also allows for simple exclamations in the illustrations, which, although also heavy in deeper meaning, at the same time are acting as distractions to the dark side. As the father has Bechdel holding a level to check the walls, she says “my arm’s falling off” in the comic. Short lines in and out of the illustration allow for the author to easily communicate her ideas with light-on-the-surface strands of ideas - using humor and blunt statements. The comic-format conveniently allows for Bechdel to communicate her story of her father’s troubles and the relationship they have - or lack thereof - easily. Having smooth storytelling with the right balance of light, dark, and humor in simple phrases makes it so that this story and its underlying themes can be successfully interpreted.

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  3. A topic that we did not particularly zoom in on in Fun Home was that although the house that these people live in is so ornate but the majority of these touches are hand me downs. On pages 259 and 260 two of the panels show off what lengths the father is willing to go to so that the house becomes even more perfect. The father is going to the dump to pick out other people's unwanted furniture and restoring it to its original condition just like he did with the house throughout the story. Hand me downs and restoration projects shine light on the idea that the father is trying to fix what is already broken.

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    Replies
    1. I don't mean this just literally but also figuratively. The father may think that something is wrong with him because of his sexuality and how he feels, so he is trying to fix everything to make it seem perfect and in some way fix himself and restore order.

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  4. One topic that we did not explore during the Socratic Seminar was the point that Alison Bechtel’s father was not happy with himself and his life so he made everyone around him miserable. On page 268, the first panel on the bottom show’s Bechtel’s unhappiness with the mirror her father is putting in her room. He was so caught up in making his home look perfect, because that is what he always wanted for himself, that he didn’t care about his family’s opinion.

    Also when Megan H talked about how Alison Bechtel compared her relationship with her father to “the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb” it made me think about how in many cases of an amputation the patient can sometimes feel as though their limb is still there. I once heard it described as a ghost or phantom limb where they often think the limb is still moving appropriately with the body. The connection between this and Bechtel’s father is that she always knew he was there but he was often of no use. It’s the sense of being so close yet so far away.

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  5. In class today we briefly discussed how on page 266 Alison Bechtel's father turns from Daedalus into the Minotaur. In the Greek myth about the Minotaur and the Labyrinth the Minotaur has been locked away in the Labyrinth and he cannot escape it just like his victims. I feel that saying her father is the Minotaur is showing that even though this Labyrinth (the house he keeps so organized) is his greatest creation it is also his prison which he cannot escape. The house represents all the walls he has built up to keep people from finding out who he really his and while this keeps him sane it also drives him mad not knowing how to escape his true problem, his very own "Labyrinth." The abuse that he takes out on his family is just like the Minotaur destroying helpless people in the myth.

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  6. One of the things that we did not discuss in class today that I think was important is how Alison Bechdel describes the furniture in her house. She describes the intricacy of the pieces with a sort of loathing, and then even says “my brothers and I couldn't compete with the astral lamps and girandoles and hepplewhite suite chairs” (268). There was a sort of sibling rivalry going on between the house and the children. Because the furniture got more attention from their father, and probably the furniture was more cooperative. “I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture” (268) refers to how the father treated his children like pieces he could rearrange and carve out, trying to make them fit into his perfect family picture. Meanwhile, he treated the furniture delicately, trying to make everything look pristine and white-picket fence worthy. On page 270, the author calls upon these decorations as “embellishments in the worst sense” meaning they were lies that just obscured the truth of the house and the inhabitants in it. Even though the author saw all of the lies in the home she lived in, and the evil in it as well, she also grew up there. During that time, she probably didn't think about how unusual her house was, even if she knew it was unusual, she probably didn't know why. She lived in her home. The immaculate rooms that her father made up was still where she played all of her games, and ate her meals. And the dysfunction that was her family, was still a family.

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  7. I can't say because I never got a copy to read, so I hope I can catch up on this assignment asap.

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  8. One thing we did not discuss in class today was how Allison's father used her and her brother's as full time servants. Allison mentions that her and her brothers were "extensions of her fathers arms". Whenever he was working on a project, he would order the kids to "go get this" and "go get that". It's almost as if he is trying to make up with not spending personal time with him by including them in his projects. It's also as if he needs them to help create the façade to actually have it be believable and functional. If not everyone is in on the fabrication of the perfect house and the perfect family, then it wouldn't be quite a fabrication at all now would it? If Allison didn't polish the mirrors and dust catchers and keep up the act, it would fall to shambles.

    Another small point I would like to make is that even though Allison viewed her fathers items as clutter and that they were functionless, I believe that she did recognize as well as admire her fathers talent. She exclaims how her father could "spin garbage into gold" and "transfigure a room with the smallest offhand flourish". Even though all of the items he brought into the home caused her irritation, I feel as though Allison respected her fathers talents despite how disrupting they were to her, and that was just part of his being whether she liked it or not. Allison knew he would never spend that much time into developing their relationship as he would redecorating and that's what mad her angry with her father's interests.

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  9. In the first illustration on page 258, when she is playing airplane with her father the caption is, " Considering the fate of Icarus after he flouted his father's advice and flew so close to the sun his wings melted, perhaps some dark humor is intended." This is a rare place in the first chapter where you really get to see Bechdel's thoughts, the opinion that she purposely flouted her father's wishes is more stated than hinted at here. It also gives you a sense of what is to come in Bechdel's life, about how she is going to turn out not like her father. This scene also somehow gives me the sense that the flying too close to the sun was not just her referring to her differences from her father, but also that if you got to close to him or above him, it was great for a moment and then "your wings melted." and things crashed.

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  10. Bechdel’s father and his family did not seem to have a close relationship. Bechdel showed that most of the time, her father usually had her work or help him around the house. Since the house represents the labyrinth or this fake appearance that Bechdel’s father has built, Bechdel suggests that in a way she has helped build this labyrinth. She did not have a say in how the house was decorated or built, and her father did not seem to care what his family members thought of what he chose to fill the house with. He would say or do what he had to do to keep anyone from questioning if his family was perfect, whether his family wanted to or not. Bechdel is not shown having close or loving moments with her father, and her father appears to only use her and his other children as an extra pair of hands to hold up a mirror or Christmas tree while Bechdel’s father imagines what the room will look like. Bechdel mentions something similar to this on page 267 in the first panel by mentioning how her father might only seem to enjoy having his children when they added to the scene to make it more authentic. In this scene the children are around the Christmas tree which is a scene that usually brings up happy or loving thoughts, but their father is not next to them, but instead standing back to get a better view of his “exhibit” of his family. This makes this moment seem artificial or something that their father had made and shows that his family is part of the labyrinth that he built. Although they are part of their farther’s labyrinth, as page 268 suggests, his family was not as perfect as the furniture and decorations in the house. This may be the reason that their house is filled with their father’s shame, because he could not make his family perfect as much as he tried, but instead designed the house to conceal their imperfections. Bechdel goes a s far as to suggest that her father is not perfect himself, by asking if the “ideal husband and father” would have sex with teenage boys. This makes Bechdel’s father seem like a hypocrite, but is willing to hide anything that the public might see as an imperfection in his family or any of its members. Bechdel’s father is referred to as the “old artificer” in the title of the memoir and it was mentioned on page 264 that he was able to “manipulate flagstones that weighed half a ton and tiniest quivers of gold leaf.” This description expands on the idea that Bechdel’s father not only built a fake appearance, but was skilled at it, and could do so in a way that others were unaware that his family was not perfect. He was able to take an old house in poor condition, and transform it into an elaborate and complex home that represented the lies and deceptions he lived behind.

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  11. In class today we never discussed the first illustration and caption on page 259. This image depicts Bechdel and her acquaintance, Tammi, discussing the Bechdel’s house. It is said that the other children would call her house a mansion and, as shown in the picture, Bechdel would always deny that it was. She even stated that she “resented the implication that my family was rich, or unusual in any way,”(Bechdel 259). This shows that she didn't want her family to be unusual, though it clearly was. In denying to others the unusualness of her home and family, she was able to also convince herself that they were a “normal” family. In this way, Bechdel is like her father. In all of the excessive decorating and staging of his house, he is almost able to convince himself that the staged life is true, that his family is not unusual.

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  12. One thing I felt that we should have further discussed was the father’s obsessive desire to keep up the illusion of perfection. He obsesses, from the minute details of the house to the necklines on Bechdel’s clothes. He is so determined to keep this perfect image of a family he has pictured and when he cannot control every action they make he becomes angry. He is suppressing his sexuality and in doing so he must distract himself by focusing on something he has total control over, his house; his own personal labyrinth. He is the Minotaur, creator of the labyrinth. He is also the Minotaur, prisoner of the labyrinth. In his desire for perfection he has become his own worst enemy. He lives out his days hiding in his house, hiding behind his decorations and adornments. Yet he will never reach the perfection he has so envisioned so instead he attacks his family, as the Minotaur attacked the children of Athens.

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  13. An example of Bechdel's being father we did not mention in the Socratic seminar today can be found on page 261 the first two tiles.During the seminar we did talk about the windows in this scene specifically because of their shading. This represented the isolation of the house and the rest of society.The two tiles are an argument between Bechdel’s father and her over wallpaper, this argument is clearly one sided after her father forces her to deal with it. This portrays Bechdel's fathers need to hide himself within the old victorian house. It shows his need for absolute control to create absolute perfection. Even if his daughter were to complain he would force her to just suck it up and deal with it, to make the feeling of the house the way he wants it. In the first of these two tiles Bechdel first hints with words that the house is the labyrinth and her father is both the designer as well as the Minotaur roaming throughout the maze.

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  14. One thing that we have not discussed in our class, would be the quote on page 268 "I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.". This quote caught my attention as it not only catches a significant figure of a tone of disappointment set between Allison and her father along with a closer examination of the father himself. For example the shift between the children and the furniture seems to act as way to say that the father cared more about the furniture. They were sentimentally more valuable to him as they seemed to be pieces of his giant labyrinth maze of a home. The interior of the house was to be kept as a perfect function to represent the perfectionism of the father himself while still staying a maze for him to live in. It could be inferred that the house was possibly a living representation of himself as he was a sexually held back man just like the Victorian era and that he seemed to be a very winding complex person himself along with the house. The father could be yet another figure of a metaphorically labyrinth itself. This could connect to why the furniture act more as children to the father than his children himself as explained by the one panel. The furniture are pieces of him, whereas the children he helped created are more detached. Allison and her siblings seem to act more as random objects floating around their father's metaphorical materialized maze of himself more than anything and are deemed nothing important to him other than to help keep his labyrinth in tact. As the father deemed his kids as nothing more than tools to his own mind he ignored their human emotions as proven through later pages, and with this ignorance, Allison ends up with feeling of grudge as her own father loved his objects more than herself overtime.

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  15. Today during our socratic seminar we mentioned the way that the father decorated the house and made it look very elegant. However, we never mentioned the way that the father presses his ideas on his family, whether they like it or not. On page 261, the first two panes are of the father pushing for his daughter to have pink, flowery wallpaper and window shades for her room. Meanwhile, no matter how much she argues he must have his way. Then, on page 286, the father makes Alison hang a mirror in her room. This forcing actions makes Alison Bechdel quote, “When I grow up, my house is going to be all metal, like a submarine”. The submarine relates to the suppression of the father’s sexuality, because he is the submarine, being drowned by the norms of the people around him.

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  16. It wasn't until rereading the story and my annotations that I picked up on something on page 260 that we may have missed in our discussion. According to the final panel on the page, the author claims that her father was "and alchemist of appearance, a savant of surface, a Daedalus of Decor", which turns into an interesting and interpretative statement once the meaning of the words are revealed. An alchemist is someone who studies the primitive form of chemistry, during a time where it was common for scientists to make attempts at turning base metals into gold. Making the connection, I redirect my attention to the first panel on the page where the author states that the father "could spin garbage into gold", and it is obvious that she is referencing this in her choice to describe him as such. However, the next description is that the father is the "savant of surface", meaning the science of surface. Connecting the two, I began to think of ho the author could be implying that her father could only spin garbage into gold on the surface, but underneath it would still be imperfect, would still be a base metal. This idea takes so many forms in this story, most prominently in the attempts made by the father to contain his families ugly secrets hidden, and he tries extremely hard to keep up this "perfect" appearance. Similarly, this theme takes place within himself as well, as he desperately tries to hide his secret from the family and the community, trapped within his own personal labyrinth. The author then goes on to say her father was a "Daedalus of decor". One one hand, the author is implying that he is crafty and very good with his hands, as it is his passion. However on the other hand, the father is described as Daedalus of only decor, and I imagine that the reason for this specification is where the father's other half comes in; Icarus. Though not mentioned in this particular paragraph, the father takes the hypothetical form of Icarus due to his inability to escape his labyrinth, his secrets. Simply, the father contains the craftsmanship of Daedalus, but the trapped concept of Icarus.

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  17. Almost everything was said at the discussion in class today. I did get many of my points across like his house being like a labyrinth: big and confusing. Like pointed out, I feel that he tried to get his house to be so perfect because he himself couldn't accept the fact that he wasn't perfect and his family was far from it. He kept himself wrapped in this world where the more perfect his house looked, the better his secret of failure was hidden. I think he felt as if he needed something to give his life meaning and instead of focusing on the children, he focused on the house. She also says on page 271 how "It's tempting to suggest, in retrospect, that our family was a sham, that our house was not a real home at all but the simulacrum of one, a museum." showing how things really was but they would never talk about it. On page 272, Bechdel says " most people, I imagine, learn to accept that they're not perfect." which can explain a lot of her father's behavior and his compulsiveness towards the house. Another fact mentioned that I found very interesting was how he could transform or change to be Iccurus, Minotaur or Daedalus very quickly like his moods. Bechdel describes how her father was the three of them on page 266 where he was the one who built the labyrinth, the one who ran from it, and the one who haunted it. His character shows to be so complex and I think that's why she had to compare him with so many people.

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  18. One of the things that made this personal narrative so layered and complex was the author's use of puns and double meanings in her phrases. One of the phrases that was mentioned in class really stuck with me on page 261, "It was his passion. And i mean passion in every sense of the word. Libidinal. Manic. Martyred." Along with the words the picture is what really leaves the impression. The father is hauling a piece of wood for his house, enveloped in his "passion for appearance". However, the real metaphor is that he was setting up his own grave. The picture closely resembles and brings forth connotations with the iconic picture of Jesus hauling his own cross. He was a martyr, dying for his beliefs. Bechdel's father was martyred also, only by himself. His war was internal and against himself. He can't cope with his sexuality ("libidinal") and his constant allusion to the world, his facade of perfection is suffocating him. The word passion, also meaning the suffering and death of Jesus, has a double meaning in her memoir, making it stronger, creating that allusion to the suffering of Christ.

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  19. One page we failed to discuss in class was p274. On this page, Bechdel discussed the rapid self-loathing of her father, and the affect that had on the house. She says, "his shame inhabited our house as pervasively and invisibly as the aromatic musk of aging mahogany." This meant her father's shame was there but just not in a tangible or visible sense. As he became more filled with shame, the house was designed to conceal it. She describes these pieces of furniture as, "mirrors, distracting bronzes, multiple doorways, visitors often got lost upstairs." This setting up of mirrors and distractions were his symbolic way of deflecting attention from himself onto anyone else. He wanted to draw as little attention to himself as possible and his furniture choice reflected that

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  20. Something that I would have liked to talk about in class but did not have the opportunity to was how Alison Bechdel’s father was a perfectionist. Everything he did had to be perfect, from his physical appearance to his home. He worked very hard trying to maintain this level of perfection, but in reality, true perfection is impossible. Bechdel's father had an obsession in trying to appear to be perfect; in order to hide what he thought was imperfect. He had a 'dark secret', and in order to keep the others unsuspecting, he became a façade. On page 274 in particular I felt this façade became known to the reader. The narrator states, “His shame inhabited our house as pervasively and invisibly as the aromatic musk of aging mahogany. In fact, the meticulous, period interiors were expressly designed to conceal it”. Bechdel says that her father is shameful of whom he is, but he tries covering this fact by distracting others with his beautiful, carefully designed house. I also found the use of the mirror on the last panel of page 274 to be slightly ironic. In this sense, the author uses mirror as a way to distract visitors on what was truly going on. However, when I think of a mirror, I always seem to think of somebody looking in and being forced to see their reflection, whether they like it or not. Her father used mirrors in his decorating; however he is having trouble coming to grips on who he really is as a person, on what his reflection showed. For me personally, an instance in which his personality seemed to become most known was on page 269, when Bechdel compared her father to herself. The stark contrast really helped me understand who each person was, and their roles. The narrator seemed to focus on the practical use for things, and did not care about the appearance of things like her father. I think their differences also may have contributed to their distant relationship, because many of their views differed. While they have some things in common, it was hard for Alison Bechdel to understand, especially at such a young age. Both were homosexuals, and while Alison Bechdel may have acted more like a tomboy, her father had some personality traits that were more feminine.

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  21. The physical abuse that the children went through is something we didn’t really discuss in class. In page 265 one of the author’s brothers puts his hand up in defense, as the father approaches him. The father’s hand is curled and he stands at a very threating stance, almost as if ready to pounce on him. On page 272 as the father spanks the author, the mother has a look of horror. Based on the age of the author at the time (Four years-old), for some families spanking is common at that age. However the horror in the mother’s face, implies that the type of spanking the father did, was out of sheer anger, and not simply as a means of correction as spanking usually is.

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  22. Graphic Memoir Notes


    “Old Father, Old Artificer” was a chapter that was so self-inclusive, I was convinced it was the entire writing piece. The picture that the author paints (Both literally and figuratively) of her father and his relation to his family and the world around him was vivid and tragic, and leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable, yet willing to read further to understand more about this brilliant inventor with a dark past, who flew too close to the sun. Particularly, the panels where Dad is working on the house’s exterior were striking, as he was a master at his craft, putting up drywall, peeling off unsightly shingles, and lifting “Stones that weighed half a ton” all for the sake of creating a beautiful space for his family to live in. Bechdel spends a lot of time hyping up her father’s prowess as a craftsman and a homeowner, highlighting what others may see him as, an artificer of beautiful spaces for the sake of making people happy.However, there is an amazing amount of evidence that all is not as nice and idyllic as it seems. It is made clear, by keeping the father and much of the house in shadows a fair amount of time, that the father is not necessarily building his beautiful house for its own sake. Indeed he is trying to hide himself in his surroundings, attempting to make himself look perfect, in the face of his conflicting sexuality and issues with self-loathing. It is explained that he is a closet homosexual (Albeit briefly) and he worries greatly about the appearance of him and his family, evidenced by his use of things such as bronzing sticks to make himself look better in public. He obsesses over the house’s looks, much to the dismay of his children, and if they ever make a mistake or do something that makes him or his perfect house seem less idyllic, he becomes the minotaur of his own labyrinth, sometimes even beating his children over issues such as a comment on a tie. Overall, the author portrays her father as a cold, near heartless person, so wrapped up in his own problems that he had little time to truly take care of his children as a person, instead opting to use them as additional arms for his housework, as he tries to deal with his own demons by shoving them to the darkest corners of his mind.

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  23. Towards the end of the class I brought up how the author used the repetition of again to help get across how her relationship with her father went in circles, but we didn't really broach any other examples of how structure was used to further explain relationship between the father and daughter, or the importance if the house. On page 259-260 she describes the neighborhood children's perspective of the house, and the describes the house in bias detail. She then describes the house by explaining her father's actions, his manic attention to detail, and finally her family's and her opinions. Her characterization of the house through the structure adds another layer of information that reveals key components, like her father's hidden secrets, and her tumultuous relationship with her father.

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  24. Due to the fact that we had long block to discuss the narrative, I feel that much of what was needed to be said was said. A point that I think wasn't discussed enough was the wife of the husband in the story. She constantly referred to the house looking like a "whorehouse", or bordello, etc. This shows how much she disliked the house while simultaneously giving hints toward the father's sexuality. Although the fathers sexuality is by now very prominent, the fact that Alison's mother now is giving hints makes it seem that the house hold has succumbed ultimately to his power. this is further proved when the mother tells the children to not comment on their fathers appearance, even if it was positive feedback.

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  25. Alison Bechtel uses the story of Icarus to explain her story. she would compare her and her father to characters in the story. she doesn't just compare one person to one character sometime she compares her to Icarus and then compares her dad to Icarus. she is showing the similarity between the two. they never really noticed the similarity till that moment in the tub. it was special for both of them but it doesn't last long. soon after they are back to where they were before, back to back not looking at caring about each other, but now they better understand each other better.

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