EWRT1A-61: reading response 9

Reading Response 9
Keeping in mind what you have read of Fun Home so far, respond to one of the prompts below. Please use specific evidence from the book to support your response.

• Compare and contrast how Alison Bechdel’s father uses books in his life to how Bechdel as a young college student does. How do books relate to their identities? To their sexual identities?

• What assets does Alison Bechdel have that help support her coming out as a lesbian? What are her obstacles?

• On page 85, Bechdel claims that her father prefers “fiction to reality.” How does this relate to the fact that Bechdel uses so many other stories– Daedalus and Icarus, Camus, The Great Gatsby, etc.– to understand her father?

• On page 104, Bechdel mentions the Stonewall Riots. Do some research about this. Why is it significant that Bechdel and her father are in New York just weeks after the Stonewall Riots?

• Respond to one of the prompts from reading response 8, but incorporate evidence from chapters 3-4.

• Choose your own focus for analysis.

how to use apostrophes

Here's a nice graphic about apostrophe use.

EWRT1A-61: grammar review 4

Here is grammar review 4: mixed constructions and modifiers.

EWRT1A-61: reading response 8

Reading Response 8
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home chapters 1-2
Choose one. Please use specific evidence in your response.

• On page 15, Bechdel illustrates some of the ways she and her father are different. Despite the differences, how are she and her father similar? Consider characteristics of behavior and/or appearance.

• What elements contribute to Bechdel believing that her father’s death was a suicide? Do you agree that these elements warrant her conclusion?

• Where does Bechdel admit to the limits of her memory and understanding? Do these admissions weaken the narrative or do they serve some purpose? Explain.

• Compare the narration with the monstration. What relationship do these share? In other words, what do the images show in comparison to what the words explain and how do the two work together? You may choose to talk about a single scene if you’d like, to give yourself focus.

• Choose your own aspect of the book for your analysis.

EWRT1A-61: essay 3

Here are the prompts for essay 3.

EWRT1A-61: Fun Home reading questions

Here are some questions to help you engage with the book as you read it.

1. In what ways are Bechdel and her father different? In what ways are they alike?

2. Bechdel believes that her father committed suicide. Why? What does she think the motivation for him was? Why is this significant for her?

3. What role do books play in Bechdel’s relationship with her father? What role do they play in her own self discovery?

4. Can you find an image in the text that sums up Bechdel’s relationship with her father? Is its placement in the story significant?

5. In what ways is Bechdel’s father able to support her? How does he do so?

6. Why does Bechdel allude to so many literary texts? How do they relate to her parents? To herself?

7. At times Bechdel seems to judge her father, but at other times she seems to resist judging him. Find instances of both in the text. Does this show a limitation in her understanding?

8. What do you think the purpose of creating Fun Home was for Bechdel?

9. In what ways are the telling (the narration) different from what is in the showing (the monstration)? Think of McCloud’s categories. Also consider that the narration is an adult Bechdel looking back and the monstration is often a young Alison experiencing things for the first time.

10. Is Alison Bechdel a reliable narrator? What does she believe that others in the book may not believe? What biases might she have?

EWRT1A-61: essay 2 due

Remember that essay 2 is due Tuesday, November 15th, and that you need to hand in both drafts. Here are a few general comments.

• Synthesis! Make at least two texts prove the same points. In order to help you with this you may want to consider a point-by-point essay structure versus a subject-by-subject one. In other words, instead of organizing your essay around the texts (the essays you are analyzing), organize the essay around your points and use the texts as examples.
  

• Give the most details around the elements that support your thesis. A few of the essays spent a long time setting up the examples, but only spent a sentence or two discussing the part of the example that really proved the thesis.
  
• MLA citation. Remember to cite specific evidence, even if you are paraphrasing. Don't forget a works cited list.
  

EWRT1A-61: grammar review 3

Here is grammar review 3, shifts and mixed constructions. Easy Writer covers shifts in chapter 18, page 102 and mixed constructions ("consistency and completeness") in chapter 14, page 92.