Similarities between “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” & “Fun Home” (Self Identity)

After reading the book “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” I found that the book had many similarities with the graphic novel “Fun Home”. Both novels’ not only shows images to help give detail to the story, but they both are based on family life and self identification. In the book “Fun Home” Bechdel uses comics to tell her life story, while Allison uses family photos; but both novels share the same concept.

Bechdel’s Father is the novel’s main focus. Bechdel tells her story about her father’s lack of love and affection and his trouble with finding his own identity. While as in the book “Two or Three Things I Know For Sure” Allison has trouble with not really being sure of her own identity.  In both novels, both families hide things from Bechdel and Allison which causes them to have trouble with identifying themselves in their older years. Bechdel’s family puts on a front like they are an ideal family because good image was everything. While the women in Allison’s family live into the stereotype of being housewives and baby barriers. It seems as if both families try to live up to the socials norms but fail to live up to their own self identity. In both novels, a lot of truth is hidden. Bechdel’s Father hides the truth about his sexuality and Allison’s mother hides the truth about the family and their past.

Throughout the book, both authors try their hardest to NOT become like their parents or the people in their family. Bechdel had a kind of resentment towards her father while Allison had the same feeling towards her mother. Bechdel did not want to be the type of person who shut the world out and wanted to be true to herself and her sexual orientation. Allison did not want to fall into the stereotypical ideal for women but she wanted to have a sense of femininity which the women in her family lacked.  For example, “Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world had made for me.” I took this quote as Allison referring to how she will not live like the women in her family lived. Even though Bechdel and Allison wanted to be opposite from their parents, I felt after reading this book they ended up being similar to the people they were trying their hardest not to be.