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The Persistent Need to Fit-In

     The life of a thirteen-year-old boy living in 1980s Black Swan Green is a never-ending performance. Adherence to unspoken social rules is a huge theme in Jason Taylor’s narrative, which is evident from the very beginning of the novel, when he refuses to wear his black parka and woolly hat because “black means you fancy yourself as a hard-knock,” and “woolly hats’re gay” (5). Because of this, the reader gets to know Jason’s two different personas: the public/social Jason, who likes games like British Bulldogs and smoking cigarettes, and the private Jason, who writes poetry and gets book tokens for Christmas.       In many ways, Jason’s self-suppression in social settings can be dismissed as temporary, a natural part of coming of age and trying to find one’s identity. Jason himself uses this same argument when attempting to justify his use of the pseudonym “Eliot Bolivar” in his poems to Madame Crommelynck: “I’m a kid. I’m thirteen. You said it’s a ...
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Truth to Artifice: Alison's Diary

Alison’s diary, particularly the evolution of her entries and the parallels it draws to her life, is–in my opinion–one of the most interesting and rich aspects of Fun Home. Alison first begins to keep a diary as a way to cope with her OCD. While her entries start out relatively mundane, she soon begins to obsessively mark her comments with the phrase “I think,” which is eventually replaced with a shorthand symbol. Even the most seemingly indisputable, objective statements are branded with her symbol of doubt, which she justifies by asking, “How did I know that the things I was writing were absolutely, objectively true?” (141). During this period of Alison’s life, she strives to keep her diary as accurate and truthful as possible, her obsessive use of “I think” representing her fear of misinterpreting reality. However, as she grows older, her diary entries begin to reflect a different form of hesitation. As she grows older, three dots begin to show up in her entries, which she claims “i...
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Old Life, New Outlook

  “‘We’ll take up where we left off, Esther,’ she had said, with her sweet, martyr’s smile. ‘We’ll act as if all this were a bad dream.’” (237). The question of whether Esther is starting somewhere new at the end of The Bell Jar or simply returning to her old life is an interesting one. Based on the quote above, Ms. Greenwood believes that Esther’s time spent in the psychiatric institutions is nothing more than a temporary interruption - a nightmare that can be erased by returning to normalcy. But what is the “normalcy” that Esther will be returning to?  The novel ends just as Esther steps into the interview with the board of directors, in hopes that they’ll clear her to return to her college. In literal terms, this is the return to normalcy her mother envisions: Esther back in school, resuming her studies, continuing along the academic path that she once succeeded on. From this interpretation, Esther's mental crisis would be viewed as a brief detour from her promising trajec...
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Holden's Absolutism

     Holden is an opinionated narrator, to say the least. In fact, one of the patterns that stands out most in his various rants and reflections is his lack of nuance and complexity in thought. Holden tends to view life in extremes/absolutes, leaving no room for alternative perspectives,  which can be overwhelming to those around him, including the reader.      A prime example of this appears in Holden’s critique of Hamlet. During a page-long rant, he asserts that Hamlet “was too much like a goddam general, instead of a sad, screwed-up type guy” (117). This passage illustrates a general theme in the majority of Holden’s spiels: he does not express his views on the world as opinions or personal beliefs, but rather as rigid facts. Even if his critiques of Hamlet have merit, his absolutist, authoritative language overwhelms the actual substance of his argument. With that in mind, it becomes difficult for anyone to seriously engage with what Holden is tryi...
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