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Essays on Fun Home

Writing an essay on Fun Home is important because it allows you to critically analyze and explore the themes, characters, and narrative style of the graphic novel. Fun Home, written by Alison Bechdel, is a thought-provoking and complex work that delves into themes such as family dynamics, sexuality, and identity. By writing an essay on this novel, you can deepen your understanding of the text and develop your analytical and writing skills.

When writing an essay on Fun Home, it's important to start by carefully reading and annotating the text. Take note of significant quotes, character development, and recurring themes. Consider the narrative structure and how it contributes to the overall meaning of the novel. Additionally, research the author's background and the historical context in which the novel is set to provide a broader perspective on the work.

When structuring your essay, consider organizing it around specific themes or characters to provide a clear and focused analysis. Use evidence from the text to support your arguments and incorporate critical perspectives from scholarly sources to enrich your analysis. Additionally, don't be afraid to engage with the text on a personal level and draw connections to your own experiences or broader societal issues.

Finally, revise and edit your essay to ensure clarity and coherence. Pay attention to the organization of your ideas, the strength of your arguments, and the effectiveness of your language. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors to further refine your essay before submitting it.

Overall, writing an essay on Fun Home is an opportunity to engage deeply with a thought-provoking and multi-layered text, and to develop your critical thinking and writing skills.

What Makes a Good Fun Home Essay Topics

When it comes to writing an engaging and thought-provoking essay on Fun Home, the topic you choose is crucial. A good essay topic should be relevant, thought-provoking, and allow for in-depth analysis. To brainstorm and choose a great essay topic, start by considering the themes and motifs present in the graphic novel. Think about the characters, their relationships, and the overall message of the story. Additionally, consider what aspect of the novel you are most interested in exploring. A good essay topic should be specific, allowing you to delve deep into the subject matter. Ultimately, a strong essay topic should spark curiosity and encourage critical thinking.

Best Fun Home Essay Topics

• The role of gender and sexuality in Fun Home
• The impact of family dynamics on the protagonist's identity
• The use of visual storytelling in Fun Home
• The theme of self-discovery and coming-of-age in the novel
• The portrayal of mental health in Fun Home
• The significance of literature and its role in the protagonist's life
• The depiction of LGBTQ+ identity in the graphic novel
• The role of memory and nostalgia in Fun Home
• The influence of the family's funeral home business on the protagonist's upbringing
• The symbolism of the house in Fun Home
• The theme of repression and its effects on the characters
• The intersection of art and truth in the graphic novel
• The portrayal of parental relationships in Fun Home
• The use of humor as a coping mechanism in the novel
• The theme of trauma and its lasting impact on the characters
• The significance of music in Fun Home
• The role of literature and its influence on the protagonist's development
• The portrayal of mental illness and its effects on the family
• The theme of acceptance and belonging in Fun Home
• The use of color and visual symbolism in the graphic novel

Fun Home Essay Topics Prompts

• If you were to rewrite Fun Home from a different character's perspective, whose viewpoint would you choose and why?
• Create a visual analysis of a specific panel or page in Fun Home, examining the use of color, composition, and symbolism.
• Imagine a conversation between the protagonist of Fun Home and another LGBTQ+ literary character. What would they discuss, and how would their experiences compare?
• Explore the theme of duality in Fun Home, considering how the characters navigate multiple identities and conflicting emotions.
• Write a critical analysis of a specific scene in Fun Home, focusing on the use of language and visual elements to convey meaning.

The Portrayal of Father/daughter Relationship in "Fun Home"

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Fun House: not a Home at All

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Construction of Identity in "Fun Home"

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Valley of The Shadows of The Text

Michel foucault’s "repressive hypothesis" & alison bechdel’s "fun home", fun home: turning a tragic childhood into a hit musical, the mix of fact and fiction in "the woman warrior" and "fun home", the portrayal of bruce bechdel in "fun home", questions of sexuality and identity in "fun home" by alison bechdel.

Alison Bechdel

Graphic novel, memoir

2006, by Alison Bechdel

The novel chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, United States, focusing on her complex relationship with her father.

The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, emotional abuse, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in understanding oneself and one's family.

Alison Bechdel, Bruce Bechdel, Helen Bechdel, Joan, Roy, Mark, Pete

Bechdel states that her motivation for writing Fun Home was to reflect on why things turned out the way they did in her life. She reflects on her father's untimely death and whether Alison would have made different choices if she were in his position.[26] This motivation is present throughout as she contrasts Bruce's artifice in hiding things with Alison's free and open self.

Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The book also generated controversy, being challenged and removed from libraries due to its contents.

“I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.” “Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice.” “It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.”

Relevant topics

• Macbeth Ambition
• Romeo and Juliet
• The Glass Menagerie
• Antigone Tragic Hero
• Death of a Salesman
• An Inspector Calls

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IB Language and Literature 2.0

Group 1 english higher and standard level, non-fiction study: fun home by alison bechdel, from the prl / originally written in english / c21st / north america / usa.

Introduction

Subtitled ‘A Family Tragicomic’, Fun Home is a graphic novel recounting the story of Alison Bechdel coming out as a lesbian. Told in non-chronological flashbacks to her childhood in Beech Creek, a small rural town tucked into the Allegheny Mountains, Pennsylvania, the story is also a way of Bechdel making sense of her father’s death by comparing his life to her own. Throughout the novel, Bechdel works through her difficult childhood relationship with her father, Bruce, and her gradual discovery that he, too, harboured secrets from Bechdel, her mother and siblings. Bechdel remembers her father’s impatience, how quick he was to lash out in punishment, and how insecure he felt about his appearance – something he attempted to cover up by throwing himself into the restoration of an old mansion in which they all lived.

While fixing up the house was her father’s passion, he also worked as a high school English teacher and as a part-time mortician in the funeral home he inherited from Bechdel’s grandparents. Nicknamed the ‘Fun Home’, Bechdel remembers enjoying herself there, watching her father prepare cadavers for burial each time there was a death in the town. To the rest of the community, the Bechdel household represented the ideal ‘nuclear family’ – but her father’s secrets would come to undermine everything Bechdel thought she believed and risked making her childhood memories nothing more than a sham.

Bechdel coming out a few months before her father’s death allowed for a renewed relationship between them both, as they bonded over their shared love of books and her newly announced lesbianism. We learn that, ultimately, Bechdel’s parents’ marriage frayed beyond repair. Unable to cope with her father’s lies any more, Bechdel’s mother asked him for a divorce. Two weeks later he was dead. So, what was her father’s secret and how did he really die? Read Fun Home to find out.

IB Student Learner Profile: Reflective

We thoughtfully consider the world and our own ideas and experience. We work to understand our strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development.

As a graphic memoir (a work of non-fiction told in pictures) Fun Home is autobiographical. It took Alison Bechdel many years to write and illustrate, and can be seen as a way of her working through complicated emotions involving the death of her father, her own sexuality, and her coming-to-terms with secrets that threatened to undermine her sense of family and the memories of her childhood. This extraordinarily reflective work demonstrates how works of literature can be cathartic for both reader and writer.

IB Lang and Lit Concept: Identity

Since coming out in 1980, Bechdel has made no secret of her sexuality and has made it her life’s work to make lesbian identity visible through comics . After leaving high school a year early, Bechdel transferred to Oberlin College, graduating with a degree in art history and studio arts in 1981. At college, Bechdel also met her first girlfriend and, at the age of 19, came out to her parents as a lesbian. That same year, Alison’s father Bruce died. After his funeral, Bechdel moved to Manhattan, applied to art schools, got rejected, and ended up working in the publishing industry. Her big break came in 1983 when one of her drawings was sent to a magazine called WomaNews, and Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For was born. The strip evolved into a series of stories centring on a group of lesbian characters and ran until 2008. In 2006, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was released and, in 2012, another graphic memoir with the title Are You My Mother? about Bechdel’s mother, Helen, was published. In 2014, Bechdel was granted a MacArthur Genius Award. She married Holly Rae Taylor in 2015 and today she lives and works in Vermont, where she was appointed Cartoonist Laureate and taught at the University of Vermont.

• Wider Reading – A Life Stripped Bare (review by Oliver Burkemann)
• The Alison Bechdel Interview (at The Comics Journal)

Part 1: Old Father, Old Artificer

“He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear what they were not.”

As the story begins, Bechdel makes the reader aware of several important pieces of information that she will explore throughout the narrative: she is a lesbian; her father was bisexual; and she believes her father killed himself. These facts will interweave with the story multiple times as Bechdel unveils her childhood memories, because they so heavily determine her young life. In the first chapter Bechdel spends time introducing her father and, in particular, his passion for restoration. In fact, he was so obsessed with his work on the house that Bechdel feels he often gave more attention to furniture than his family – and treated members of his own family like furniture in the house.

As a result, Bechdel came to resent helping her father redecorate, grew up hating fine decor, and started to drift apart from her father, who was more concerned with his DIY projects than in being a good parent. While time has mollified her negative feelings somewhat – and they were able to reconnect before her father’s death – she remembers feeling like her father was a minotaur, a monster dwelling at the center of a maze. She would never know what might set her father off and cause him to lose his temper with her, or her long suffering mother.

• Chapter 1 Questions and Activities
• Studying Graphic Novels (ppt)

Literary Allusions #1

Bechdel compares her relationship with her father to Icarus, who, upon refusing to listen to his father’s advice, flew too close to the sun and fell from the sky. Bechdel explains that in her case, it was her father who fell from the sky. She says that if her father was Icarus, he would also be Daedalus, father of Icarus, who first fashioned the wings Icarus used. Research the stories of Daedalus and Icarus and think about why Bechdel might want us to draw these associations in Chapter 1 of her story.

Learner Portfolio: All is not what it seems…

Use your study of chapter 1 (or elsewhere in the text) to discuss the theme of ‘appearance versus reality’ in Fun Home. Present examples of how the following aspects of the text introduce this theme at the start of the novel (or elsewhere if you wish):

• Characterisation

Part 2: A Happy Death

“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love.”

Chapter 2 explores the circumstances surrounding Bruce’s death, and Alison’s suspicion that his death was in fact a suicide: he was hit by a truck that he supposedly hadn’t seen only two weeks after her mother, Helen, asked him for a divorce. Co-incidentally, he was reading a novel by Camus entitled ‘A Happy Death’ during this time as well. When she received the tragic news, Alison was five hours away at college and she and her girlfriend Joan drove back to Beech Creek. When she is re-united with her brother, they greet each other with happy smiles. Bechdel reflects that Camus would have said that smiling in the face of death is not an inappropriate response, as death and life are equally absurd and meaningless. She wonders if Camus’s writing could have influenced her father to end his own life.

Elsewhere, this chapter recounts the story of Bruce and Helen’s courtship and marriage. While he was serving in the army he was stationed in Europe and Helen flew out for the wedding. Afterwards, they had children and were forced to return to Beech Creek to run the family funeral home. Bruce left the army and took up teaching – and began his obsessive restoration project on the family mansion. Alison wonders whether his time at the funeral home, in such close proximity to death, desensitised him to the notion of dying.

• Chapter 2 Questions and Activities

Literary Allusions #2

When she was a child, Alison thought of her own family like The Addams Family, a famous 1960s TV comedy family with pale skin, dark hair and bizarre secrets. Find pictures of the Addams Family – or even an old episode – and think about what Bechdel is implying about her own family through this comparison.

Learner Portfolio: Openness vs Repression

Homosexuality is an important theme in this section of the novel. Alison juxtaposes the exploration of her own sexuality next to her father’s repression of his bisexuality. The reader can clearly see the comparison between ‘openness and repression’, especially when Alison is at college, a more open and tolerant environment than her family home, where she is able to explore her sexuality without shame. By comparison, Bruce never came out as gay: he repressed his homosexuality and hid the truth from his wife and family.

However, Alison resists the temptation to simplify. Fun Home does not suggest that coming out is either necessary or easier than repressing one’s sexuality. In fact, she admits in chapter 2 that coming out was a terrifying experience and relates how her journey to acceptance was not straightforward. For example, at one point she lied to her father about wanting to dress like a lesbian and, before she went to college, she shared her father’s sense of shame at the feeling she was in some way different to others.

Create a timeline of Alison’s ‘journey of discovery’ throughout Fun Home. Mark important moments and events in Alison’s life, for example moving to college; meeting her first girlfriend and so on. Annotate your timeline with ideas about the theme of ‘openness vs repression’.

Part 3: That Old Catastrophe

“My father’s death was a queer business – queer in every sense of that multi-valent word.”

Alison remembers more about her father’s death in chapter 3. She explains that four months before her father died, she came out as a lesbian to her parents. Her moment of realisation struck in the college library when she read about homosexuality rather than through any personal encounter. She remembers how her father called her to express his support, but also receiving an awkward letter from her mother giving her very mixed messages. A few days later she discovers why her mother was so conflicted; she learns that Bruce had been hiding his homosexuality for many years, ever since a traumatic childhood incident, and he had gone on to have affairs with men and teenage boys, including Alison’s babysitter Roy.

• Chapter 3 Questions and Activities
• How Allusion Works (Literary devices explainer)

Literary Allusions #3

Bechdel recounts how her father had an obsession with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life, and how Fitzgerald so closely put himself into his novels. Her father’s early letters to Bechdel’s mother were romantic and passionate. What does Bruce have in common with Fitzgerald’s most famous character, Jay Gatsby?

Learner Portfolio: Spot the Allusion

Fun Home is a memoir that is rife with literary allusions. For example, the title of Chapter 1, “Old Father, Old Artificer,” is an allusion from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in which an artist, Stephen Dedalus, feels increasingly isolated and detached from the world around him. In the same chapter, the author also employs allusion in her comparisons with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus.

Find as many literary (and other) allusions in the novel as you can – challenge yourself to find at least one in every chapter. Create a chart in which you explain the allusion and comment on the significance of the allusions to your understanding of Bruce, Alison or the family story. Alternatively, create an annotated collage using individual panels you have selected from the work.

Parts 4 and 5: In the Shadow… / The Canary Coloured Caravan

“I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him… he was attempting to express something feminine in me.”

As Alison continues to retrace her childhood memories, we find out more about how she discovered she is a lesbian as well as seeing her own father’s shift from bisexuality to homosexuality. While the young Alison Bechdel was confused and did not entirely understand what was happening in her family and to herself, now when she looks back everything makes sense. For instance, Bechdel remembers how her father tried to dress her up in the most feminine clothes covered in flowers and floral designs while she wanted to wear plain sneakers and chequered shirts. This chapter also reveals more of Bruce’s secret affairs through photographs and flashbacks. Rooting through her father’s old things, Bechdel found a photograph of her babysitter Roy reclining on a hotel bed in his underwear during a family trip in which her mother did not come along. She also remembers how her father took on a young man, Bill, to help with yard work and to work as a babysitter. Bill was brought along on a camping trip to the family’s deer camp in the woods of Allegheny. Later she finds more photos; in one her father is dressed in a bathing suit; in another he is posed on the roof of his college frat house – Alison wonders who may have taken these photos.

Part 5 of the graphic memoir opens with a fantastic dream sequence: Alison races up a winter mountainside hoping to see the sunset with her father, but he is nowhere to be seen. By the time her father arrives the sunset is over. Looking back, Alison wonders whether her dream was a premonition of her father’s death. She also wonders whether being stuck all the way out in rural Pennsylvania had anything to do with the way his life turned out, and whether his life might have been different if he had lived somewhere else. While Fun Home is very much about Alison’s relationship with her father, her mother is also an important character in the story. In this chapter, Bechdel recalls being proud and amazed at all her mother’s talents, from acting to singing to playing piano. However, she also remembers her mother devoting much of her time to these activities, often at the expense of the family. Alison explains that throughout her childhood every member of the family became artistic somehow, and withdrew into themselves. It is around this time that she developed obsessive compulsive behaviours and this chapter recounts how, with the help of her mother, she eventually overcame this disorder.

• Chapters 4 and 5 Questions and Activities
• Wider Reading – What is Heteronormativity and How does it Shape the World Around You? (Shape article)
• Wider Reading – Queer Nation Manifesto (at Verso Books; caution strong language)

literary Allusions #4

The title of part 5 is a reference to Kenneth Grahame’s stories for children called the Wind in the Willows. One of the main characters in the story is Toad of Toad Hall, who becomes extraordinarily excited about his new hobbies. Caravanning is one of Toad’s first crazes. Alison remembers her father colouring in Toad’s caravan for her because she was doing it all wrong. How does Bruce’s perfectionism rub off on Alison in this chapter?

Learner Portfolio: Living in a Straight World

In 1988, theorists Michael Warner and Lauren Berlant coined the academic term ‘heteronormativity’ to express the idea that being straight is the assumed, natural expression of sexuality. Therefore, any other expression, such as ‘gayness’ or ‘lesbianism,’ is a deviation from the norm. The problem with this is in that very word: ‘deviation’, the root of ‘deviant’, which has negative connotations linked to perversion and being unnatural.

While Fun Home does not explicitly tackle the issue of heteronormativity, because it is ‘folded in’ to culture, society, education, and institutions all around us, it is hard to escape. From the naked pictures of women in men’s calendars, to the assumed nuclear family dynamics of Beech Creek, to casual comments made about lesbians, to the shows she watches on television, and more, Alison grows up in a heteronormative environment. Moreover, she is subject to constant criticism and correction from her father who, because she is a girl, wants her to express an obvious feminine identity.

Find out more about heteronormativity by using the wider reading links in this section, then study chapters 4 and 5 (and other chapters if you wish). Find panels and illustrations that address the theme of heteronormativity. Collect these panels, and write a page or so explaining how the world around Alison either consciously or unconsciously suggests that being straight is ‘normal’ while being gay is ‘abnormal’.

Part 6: The Ideal Husband

“There was a lot going on that summer. I’m glad I was taking notes.”

Arguably the most tumultuous chapter of Alison’s graphic memoir, Part 6 recounts the events of the summer she turned 14: she has her first period, learns to masturbate, gains an interest in men’s clothing, and starts to skip writing in her diary, sometimes for weeks at a time. During this summer, Alison also began to realise that her father may not be everything that she thought. Bruce got in trouble with the police for giving alcohol to a minor and begins seeing a psychiatrist; years later Alison learns he was having a sexual relationship with two underage brothers.

The tumult in the Bechdel family is echoed by the whirlwind of outside events that intrude into the narrative. President Nixon is embroiled in the Watergate scandal, a plague of cicadas (locust-like insects) descends upon the town, and a huge storm fells a tree which narrowly misses destroying the Bechdel family home. In some ways, these events mark Alison’s coming-of-age as she realises the world is a place of confusion, corruption and chaos.

• Chapter 6 Questions and Activities
• Drawn From Life (an interview with Alison Bechdel published in the New Yorker)

literary allusions #5

Helen is starring in a play by Oscar Wilde, and Bechdel purposely draws parallels between the life of the famous playwright and her own father. While Bruce narrowly escaped being prosecuted, Wilde was in fact sent to jail for homosexuality. His play, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ contains references to homosexuality, though homosexuality is never explicitly revealed as a theme.

Learner Portfolio: practise for Paper 2

Write this Learner Portfolio in the style of a practice Paper 2 response. You can use one of the prompts below, or another prompt given to you by your teacher. Although Paper 2 requires you to write about two literary works, for the sake of this exercise you could focus only on your response to Fun Home, or you could try to compare your ideas to another literary work you have studied ( visit this post for more help with Paper 2 compare and contrast skills).

Choose one of the following prompts (or use another prompt you have been given), talk with your teacher about how to approach and structure your writing, then complete your portfolio entry:

• In literature, characters who have flaws are the most interesting. Discuss with reference to works of literature you have studied.
• “Coming of age stories” are ones which present the psychological, moral, and social shaping of a character. Discuss how the protagonist develops in literary works you have studied.
• Examine the portrayal of difference (e.g. physical limitations, mental illness, race, class or sexual identity) in literary works you have studied.
• “All that glitters is not gold.” Discuss how appearances are misleading in literary works you have studied.

Part 7: The Antihero’s Journey

“Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”

In the summer of 1976, Bechdel remembers going to New York with her father. It is during this visit that Bechdel recalls seeing ‘cosmeticized’ masculinity, and examples of gayness everywhere. She recounts going to see a broadway show and considering all the possibilities of homosexuality. However, while wandering around alone, Bechdel’s younger brother John was nearly picked up by a gay man. Only Christopher dashing back to the apartment where Bechdel and her family were staying saved him.

In this final chapter of Fun Home, Alison manages to draw closer to her father. Books and literature were a common ground between them, and her and her father bonded when Alison studied Literature at University. A few weeks before he died, the two of them went to see a movie together. In the car on the way, Bruce admitted his homosexuality to Alison. Before the end of the story, Alison says that shame of one’s sexuality is ‘a kind of death’ and admits that her father was there to catch her when she leapt into her homosexuality.

• Chapter 7 Questions and Activities

literary allusions #6

During college, Alison is required to study Ulysses by James Joyce, itself a reworking of The Odyssey by ancient Greek writer Homer. Reading this coincided with when she truly understood she was a lesbian. She describes her joining the gay student union and her departure into the world of homosexuality as a type of ‘great journey’, her own personal odyssey.

Learner Portfolio: Bruce Bechdel

The novel has centered on Alison’s relationship with Bruce, including aspects of him that Alison did not know of as a child: his hidden homosexuality and the string of affairs he hid throughout his marriage to Alison’s mother, Helen. In a mirror image of Alison’s life, while she eventually explored and expressed her sexuality and identity openly, Bruce instead built walls to hide or imprison himself – but he never seems happy with who he is. Therefore, Bruce comes across as an incredibly complex and changeable character. On one page, he may be presented as a monster, threatening violence to Alison or her brothers; on another page he might come across as pitiable, or good-humoured, and so on.

As a graphic memoir, the images Alison Bechdel uses to tell her story carry as much weight as the written word. For example, on page 197, Bechdel recalls that her earliest memories of her father are of him being a towering, imposing presence. The low-angle illustration of this panel suggests just as much, as Bechdel’s father looms over the vantage point of the reader with a cruel look on his face.

Collect five or six images of Bruce from throughout the novel: each image should reveal a different ‘side’ to Bruce’s character. Annotate your images and / or use them in a presentation about Bruce that you give to the rest of the class.

Towards Assessment: Higher Level Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length (20 marks) .††

Please find suggestions here; but always be mindful of your own ideas and class discussions and follow the direction of your own programme of study when devising your assessment tasks.

Fun Home would be an excellent text to use when writing your Higher Level Essay. You might find the graphic novel form is an accessible and interesting subject for your analysis. Remember that you need to explain how the author’s choices shape the meaning and create effects in a literary work, so you should include comments about both the verbal and visual elements of Fun Home. Questions you might like to consider include, but are not limited to:

• How important is setting in relation to Alison’s journey from repression to openness in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel?
• Examine the role and significance of Alison’s diary in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
• Explore the symbolism of the Gothic Revival Mansion in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.
• How does a comparison of Alison and her father Bruce illuminate the themes and concerns of Alison Bechdel in her graphic memoir Fun Home?
• Discuss the verbal and visual presentation of Bruce Bechdel in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
• To what extent might the reader’s understanding of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel rely on understanding certain allusions in the text?
• Explore the role of Alison’s mother in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
• What is the importance of ‘realism’ in both the themes and graphic style of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel?

Towards Assessment:  Individual Oral

Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work (or two literary works if you are following the Literature-only course), students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt:  Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied. (40 marks)

Fun Home would be an ideal text to consider when planning for this assessed activity. The text explores some very interesting themes such as repression and openness that could be used to form Global Issues related to sexuality and identity. Now you have finished reading and studying Alison’s graphic memoir, spend a lesson working with the  IB Fields of Inquiry : mind-map the novel, include your ideas for Global Issues, make connections with other Literary Works or Body of Works that you have studied on your course and see if you can make a proposal you might use to write your Individual Oral.

Here are one or two suggestions to get you started, but consider your own programme of study before you make any firm decisions about your personal Global Issue. Whatever you choose, remember a Global Issue must have  local relevance,   wide impact  and be  trans-national :

• Field of Inquiry:  Beliefs, Values and Education
• Global Issue:   coping with the knowledge of death
• Possible Pairings (Lit):  Broken April by Ismail Kadare; The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt; Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee; The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami; Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick; The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.
• Possible Pairings (Lang and Lit): Patton Oswalt’s Annihilation comedy stand-up; I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach; Oliviera Toscani’s United Colours of Benetton adverts; Nelson Mandela’s speeches.

When Alison first learns that her father has died, her reactions run the full gamut of emotions from grief, to dispassionate indifference, to anger – and even laughter. By exploring this idea you are dealing with a universal issue that is truly global and might come up in any number of other literary or non-literary works.

• Field of Inquiry:  Culture, Community and Identity
• Global Issue:   being different
• Possible Pairings (Lit):  The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare; Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy; Selected Poems by Charlotte Mew; The Vegetarian by Han Kang.
• Possible Pairings (Lang and Lit): editorial cartoons by Ann Telnaes ; Drop the ‘I’ Word online campaign; Homer and Apu from The Simpsons animated television series; Masculinities Barbican exhibition; The ‘Difficult Duchess’ newspaper articles; Alison Wright’s Human Tribe photography.

When Alison first begins to realise she is different to other people she tries to hide it from her father and feels shame, partly because she lives in a context where heteronormativity is very much assumed. However, later in life she is able to explore her sexuality more freely and eventually comes to accept who she is – and be proud of her sexual identity.

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Alison Bechdel’s Sexual Identity in “Fun Home” Essay

Introduction, works cited.

“Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel is a graphic memoir about her relationship with her father, the story of her personal development, and their sexual identities as homosexuals. It is a nonlinear story told through memories with allusions to literature, myth, and other forms of art. Events are often revisited after new information is revealed to the reader, in a way imitating the way a brain works when gaining context for previously experienced events. This paper will focus on page 58 of the graphic memoir because it shows a critical event in the development of the author’s sexual identity.

The book covers a lot of themes and complex situations that can arise in the life of a person. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how the sexual identity of the father affects the development of the sexual identity of Alison. This page, in particular, is one of the more clear examples of this relationship. This page takes place in chapter three of the book. This is the first chapter where the narrative centers on Alison, and not with her father, and yet it all comes back to him.

In the book “Feminism is for Everybody,” Bell Hooks describes how important it is for women to have their sexual identity (88). She writes about how sexuality is an expression of agency, and how sexist ideas often prevent women from showing their agency (Hooks 91). This idea can be seen in chapter three when Alison talks about how she thought that her newfound sexual identity would distance herself from her monotonous life at home, and her father. However, page 58 forever dashes those hopes. It takes place after Alison sends a letter to her family, telling them that she is a lesbian. At this moment, she has not yet had sex but has gained a grasp of who she is, with the help of literature on the topic of homosexuality. After an exchange of letters with her disapproving mother, she receives a phone call that reveals to her the true nature of her father’s identity. The phone call is made by her mother, with her father not being able to come to terms with his homosexuality at the time. This phone call completely hijacks her personal narrative in this chapter. After it, she briefly describes her further sexual development but ends the chapter with the focus on her dad.

There could be a variety of reasons for this loss of agency. One of the primary ones would be the importance of this reveal for Alison in creating a context for her father’s behavior. Up until this point in the book, she already described him as an emotionally distant person, whose moments of joy were at times as unsettling as his anger. So despite being robbed of liberation through developing a sexual identity, she still sees this as an important moment in her life. It is also crucial to point out that despite the loss of Alison’s initial hopes; she does not let it define her sexual identity. She still expresses full agency in her real life, even if the narrative of the chapter changes focus.

This page also shows the differences between her approach to homosexuality and the approach of her father. Through the experience of coming out, she finds herself to be more confident and happy. She makes friends who share her experiences, find love, and a stable relationship. She is honest with herself, and even the book itself is an expression of this honesty. On the other hand, her father was not able to be so open about his sexuality. Perhaps, it was his upbringing that prevented him from doing so or the environment he grew up in; he was not able, to be honest with his family or even himself. As mentioned earlier, this page puts his emotional distance and outbursts into a new context for Alison. She can see how his frustration can be a cause for some of his faults. It would be inappropriate for me to say that it is the sole reason behind his behavior, as I am not a psychiatrist, and I have not known the man, but there is a chance that it was one of the possible reasons for it (Krahé 219).

This phone call can be seen as the point where Alison starts thinking differently about her relationship with her father. During it, she also finds out that he was molested by a farmhand at a young age. The art shows how her surprise and anger immediately turns to sadness and introspection. Her body language goes from being defensive to fallen. In the second panel, she is not angry at him for hiding the truth but is sad to hear that this happened to him. This is supported by her previous statement that despite all the negative behavior he expressed, she held no anger against him (Bechdel 58).

“Fun Home” is a deeply personal story, told with a sense of humor and without false drama. Despite the focus on her father, Alison is shown as an independent person. Her relationship with her father is important to the story, but it does not define her, or her sexual identity.

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home . Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Hooks, Bell. Feminism is for Everybody . Taylor and Francis, 2015.

Krahé, Barbara. The Social Psychology of Aggression . Psychology Press, 2013.

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IvyPanda. (2020, November 12). Alison Bechdel's Sexual Identity in "Fun Home". https://ivypanda.com/essays/alison-bechdels-sexual-identity-in-fun-home/

"Alison Bechdel's Sexual Identity in "Fun Home"." IvyPanda , 12 Nov. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/alison-bechdels-sexual-identity-in-fun-home/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Alison Bechdel's Sexual Identity in "Fun Home"'. 12 November.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Alison Bechdel's Sexual Identity in "Fun Home"." November 12, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alison-bechdels-sexual-identity-in-fun-home/.

1. IvyPanda . "Alison Bechdel's Sexual Identity in "Fun Home"." November 12, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alison-bechdels-sexual-identity-in-fun-home/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Alison Bechdel's Sexual Identity in "Fun Home"." November 12, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/alison-bechdels-sexual-identity-in-fun-home/.

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Moscow biennale pokes fun at consumers and politicians

By Sophia Kishkovsky

• March 9, 2007

MOSCOW — The art of shopping, rather than art, might be foremost on the minds of shoppers at TSUM, the Moscow department store, but they have a surprise awaiting them as they round the corner from racks of Armani Junior and Miss Blumarine childrenswear.

A nondescript white door opens to a huge concrete hall full of dozens of screens showing continuous American video art in a cacophony of images and sounds. The videos, some offering commentary on consumer culture, are part of the main project of the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which is entitled "Footnotes on Geopolitics, Market, and Amnesia."

The biennale was conceived as five autonomous projects by eight international curators, including Rosa Martinez and Daniel Birnbaum, who have served as curators at the Venice Biennale, and Fulya Erdemci, who was director of the Istanbul Biennial from 1994 to 2000.

The entire fourth floor of an unfinished new wing of TSUM — with construction workers busily drilling on walls — has been taken over by the biennale, which opened March 1 and runs until April 1. There are also dozens of special and parallel projects at other sites in Moscow. Two special guests of the biennale, Yoko Ono and Robert Wilson, will put on exhibitions later in the spring after the main event closes.

Not only floor space, but also the store's sound system has been used. A lecture on the religious roots of the modern economic system by Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher, was broadcast one day — in Italian but with a Russian translation.

"The ladies who were shopping probably didn't know what hit them," said Joseph Backstein, deputy director of Rosizo, the state center for museums and exhibitions, and the biennale's commissioner. Nor, said Backstein, did Agamben know he would be speaking in a department store.

The biennale's festive opening on March 1 in the store's cosmetics department featured speeches by Mikhail Shvydkoi, the director of Russia's Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency, a branch of the Culture Ministry, city officials, and a U.S. Embassy representative. The American video art program comes as Russia and the United States are holding celebrations this year to mark 200 years of diplomatic relations.

The Russian government allocated 52 million rubles, or about $2 million, for the biennale's main program. Vladislav Surkov, deputy chief of staff for President Vladimir Putin, writing in the biennale's catalogue, described it "as an important part of the cultural policy of a democratic Russia." He added, "We believe it is important for contemporary art to engage in dialogue with society. Our concern is not only creating an artistic context and a creative environment, but also supporting the humanitarian potential of art."

One of the biennale's most striking exhibitions is not in the main program but among the special projects: a vast retrospective of Sots Art, the Soviet underground version of Pop Art, including works that undercut the Soviet regime by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. Surprisingly, that exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery also includes post-Soviet Sots Art of the kind that has been known to raise hackles in the Russia of President Putin and which provoked anger during the first biennale.

Among the pieces on display is a comic photo collage by the Blue Noses group that appears to depict Putin, Osama bin Laden, and President George W. Bush lounging together in boxer shorts like three drunken Russians. It hangs near a new video installation that includes a recording of Putin's New Year's address to the nation — set to a mocking laugh track.

The Russian Sots Art show segues into an exhibition of Chinese political art, including a roomful of irreverent takes on Mao. Russia is also marking a "Year of China" with a series of cultural events.

The biennale's main venues, as much as the art work, offer a commentary on the trajectory of Russia's development. The first biennale was held in the former Lenin Museum, full of busts of the founder of the Soviet state, with financial support but only cautious moral support from the Russian government and no sponsorship from the country's new rich.

Now the main venues are TSUM, which is owned by Mercury, a Russian distributor of imported luxury goods; and the Federation Tower, a skyscraper complex, billed as Europe's tallest, that is under construction in Moscow City, an area that will become the Russian capital's new business district.

Both venues have come under criticism. The TSUM setup of simultaneous video art screenings resulted in a mishmash with no sound, complained Moscow art critics. And many bewailed the difficulty of navigating a construction site to get to the Federation Tower. The critics also found the exhibition amorphous.

"The exhibition turned out chaotic and indefinite with the categorical absence of a clear idea and decisive meaning," wrote Sergey Solovyov in Noviye Izvestia, a Moscow newspaper.

Backstein, the biennale's commissioner, who first made his name on the Soviet underground art scene, also organized and served as coordinating curator of the first biennale and sees the venues as a logical stage in the development of Russia and its art scene.

"I had a metaphor that the Lenin Museum was a goodbye to the past and the construction site is a kind of appeal to the future," he said. "Then of course there's the relationship between real estate and art. It's like the East Village in New York. When artists settle there, then real estate prices go up and artists are kicked out and they settle elsewhere. There is a dialectic common to many countries of the relationship between the real estate market and art."

That metaphor might best apply to Winzavod, a former wine factory reopened as an art space to coincide with the biennale. It is the largest take yet on the Moscow trend of turning former industrial sites into art galleries. Opening night had the vibe of a wild art school frat party, with rivers of beer and bad wine and crowds trying to crash the gate.

But some exhibitions offered islands of serenity, even mysticism, such as "Veriu," or "I Believe," which was curated by Oleg Kulik, the artist known for his performances as a dog.

Backstein took the critical sniping in stride, noting the changes that have transformed the Russian art scene since the last biennale, when rich Russians were too wrapped up in 19th-century art or too worried about the political risks of contemporary art to back the biennale.

This time, he said, private sponsors gave $500,000 for the main project and financed special projects such as a retrospective of films by Matthew Barney. Janna Bullock, a Russian-born real estate developer who divides her time between Moscow and New York, brought the films — and the artist — to Moscow at the suggestion of Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, paying the $150,000 bill. Bullock has created a foundation that brought the works of 20 Russian artists to Art Basel Miami and she will sponsor Barneys exhibition at the upcoming Venice biennale.

Stella Kay, a Moscow art collector who recently turned her commercial gallery into a foundation to support contemporary artists, turned down his request for biennale backing, Backstein said.

But on Tuesday, she hosted a lecture for collectors and journalists by Roger Buergel, the artistic director of Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.

And just behind the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, Vladimir Seminikhin, a construction magnate who divides his time between Moscow and Monaco, has opened a state-of-the-art gallery to display his collection of 20th-century Russian art, which he often shares with the Tretyakov Gallery.

Now, said Backstein, Moscow has about 500 modern art collectors.

"It's the logic of consumption," said Backstein. "What is a rich Russian? It means you must have an apartment in Moscow, a Bentley, a dacha on Rublyovka, a house in London, a villa in Sardinia, and a yacht. Then you must buy modern art."

by Alison Bechdel

Fun home literary elements.

Graphic Novel, Memoir

Setting and Context

USA (Pennsylvania and New York) West Germany; approx. 1950s - 1980s.

Narrator and Point of View

Alison Bechdel is the protagonist of the novel and writes her recollections in the first-person.

Tone and Mood

The subtitle of Fun Home describes it as a "Tragi-Comic."

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: Alison Bechdel; Antagonist: Suppression of emotions

Major Conflict

Alison Bechdel's father, Bruce Bechdel, (likely) killed himself when she was 20. She explores his latent homosexuality throughout her memoir and examines its reverberations throughout her life.

Because memoir does not unfold chronologically, the climax comes fairly early on in the book. Bechdel reveals in the first chapter that her father, Bruce, secretly had sex with teenage boys and died in a likely suicide when the author was 20.

Foreshadowing

-The first image in the memoir is of young Alison playing "airplane" with her father. She uses this visual to invoke the myth of Icarus and Daedalus, thus foreshadowing her father's self-destructive path. "In our particular reenactment of this mythic relationship," she writes, "it was not me but my father who was to plummet from the sky" (4).

-In describing her father's penchant for interior decoration, Bechdel calls him "an alchemist of appearance, a savant of surface, a Daedalus of decor" (6). This melodic repetition emphasizes Bruce Bechdel's ability to cover up harsh realities with beautiful artifice, thus foreshadowing the revelation that he was not the cookie-cutter husband and father he pretended to be.

- Bechdel writes about the emergence of her own minimalist aesthetic as a reaction to her father's embellishments. She calls herself "butch to his nelly"(15), which foreshadows the revelation that both father and daughter are homosexual. It also foreshadows their eventual conversation about sexuality at the end of the memoir in which Bruce admits (to a certain degree) that he is gay.

Understatement

-Bechdel writes, "My brothers and I had lots of chores at Fun Home, but also many interesting opportunities for play" (37). The word "interesting" is an understatement because the children were playing with the accouterment for a funeral, including capsules of smelling salts intended for people who swooned from grief.

-"My father was really down there, I told myself. Stuck in the mud for good this time" (54). Here, Bechdel is referring to her grandmother's story about her father, Bruce, getting stuck in the mud as a child. This is an understatement because Bruce is not actually just stuck in the mud this time - he is dead. Bechdel increases the impact of this understatement by juxtaposing it with an image of Bruce Bechdel's grave.

-"My father's death... was strange, certainly, in its deviation from the normal course of things. It was suspicious. Perhaps even counterfeit" (57). Bechdel continues her pattern of using understatement when describing death (especially her father's). It is an understatement to call his death "a deviation," because it is clearly a defining moment in Bechdel's life and the emotional core of her memoir. However, her use of understatement is consistent with Bechdel's professed indifference to death - both are defense mechanisms that allow her to distance herself from the grief.

Bechdel frequently invokes literary allusions throughout her memoir, many of which are detailed in the "Analysis" sections. A few additional examples:

-Bechdel reveals that Bruce was gay by first writing that "he appeared to be an ideal husband and father... but would an ideal husband and father have sex with teenage boys? (17). Her specific choice of words is a reference to Oscar Wilde's play "An Ideal Husband" (a recurring allusion). This play, Wilde's most popular, deals with themes of public and private lives and the difficulty of atoning for past discretions.

-When describing the tension that pervaded her childhood home, Bechdel writes that she and her brothers "knew our way around well enough, but it was impossible to tell if the Minotaur lay beyond the next corner" (21). This is another allusion to the Icarus and Daedalus narrative - the Minotaur is a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. In the ancient Greek myth, the Minotaur lived at the center of the labyrinth that Daedalus designed - until Theseus, the Athenian hero, killed the beast.

-Bechdel describes herself and her father as "not only... inverts, [but] inversions of one another" (98). This description references Proust's use of the term "inverts" to describe his homosexual characters.

See separate section on "Imagery"

-"He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage" (28). Bechdel uses a paradoxical passage from Camus's 'A Happy Death' to describe her parents' marriage. Bruce Bechdel denied his homosexuality at the beginning of his and Helen's relationship, which allowed her to have a family. However, their marriage in and of itself did not fulfill her and she eventually gave up on their dynamic ever improving.

-"Who embalms the undertaker when he dies? It was like Russell's paradox... the famous conundrum of a clean-shaven barber whose sign reads, 'I shave all those men, and only those men, who do not shave themselves.' The barber, equally unable to shave himself, and to not shave himself, is impossible. Yet somehow, there he is" (51). Bechdel overlays this famous quandary onto images of her father's funeral, connecting it to her youthful struggle to understand his death: She is looking at her father even though he is no longer there. It seems impossible and yet, it is true.

-"If my father had 'come out' in his youth, if he had not met and married my mother... where would that leave me?" (197). This paradox is the closest Bechdel comes to a resolution about her father's bifurcated identity. Throughout her memoir, Bechdel identifies ways in which Bruce Bechdel's hidden sexuality caused turmoil in her family life. However, she realizes that if not for his shame, he never would have been so committed to the artifice of heterosexuality. Ultimately, this paradox reveals that Bruce Bechdel, for all his faults, is why Alison Bechdel exists; he is the reason she is who she is. Therefore, her resentment and latent anger can only take her so far - now that he is gone, all she can do is accept him, even though he never accepted himself.

Parallelism

-"I was Spartan to my father's Athenian, modern to his victorian, butch to his nelly, utilitarian to his aesthete" (15). Bechdel frequently uses parallelism to draw connections between her and her father, who often seem to be complete opposites. Here, this device acts to align Bruce and Alison not only in spite of but because of their diametrically opposed styles.

- "Maybe this was the same offhanded way his own notoriously cold father had shown him his first cadaver. Or maybe he felt that he'd become too inured to death, and was hoping to elicit from me an expression of the natural horror he was no longer capable of. Or maybe he just needed the scissors" (44-45). Again, Bechdel uses parallelism to bridge the distance between herself and Bruce Bechdel. In this instance, she projects her own emotions onto her father, thus ascribing a deeper meaning to his actions. Even if it is purely conjecture, Bechdel is looking for answers in every memory she has - hoping that she will be able to figure out the mysteries that surrounded her upbringing.

-"Bruce: 'You're the only one in that class worth teaching.' Alison: 'It's the only class I have worth taking'" (199). Similar to the previous examples of parallelism, this one serves to align Alison Bechdel with her father. In fact, their shared love of literature is evident throughout Bechdel's memoir, and her frequent use of literary allusions as a lens through which she can analyze her life can be traced back to her father, Bruce.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

-"Like many fathers, mine could be occasionally prevailed on for a spot of 'Airplane'" (3). This is an example of metonymy because Bechdel uses the word "Airplane" to refer to the game where an adult balances a child on his or her feet.

-"...the one definition conspicuously missing from our mammoth Webster's" (57). This is an example of metonymy because Bechdel uses the formal name "Webster's" (the publisher of the dictionary) to refer to the dictionary itself.

-"For crissakes! I stopped for a hot dog" (139). This is an example of synecdoche because Bruce uses "hot dog" to refer to the act of stopping and eating a hot dog.

Personification

-"My own odyssey was calling so seductively" (207). Bechdel personifies the word odyssey in this way to emphasize the fact that her journey is one of sexual self-discovery.

-"The real accusation dared not speak its name" (175). By personifying the "accusation" that Bruce attempted to seduce an underage boy, Bechdel highlights the detachment between her father's actions and the artificial persona he struggles to maintain.

-"But the immersion-- like green dishwashing liquid bathing a cuticle-- left me supple and open to possibility" (191). Here, Bechdel is describing her sexual awakening over the course of a weekend in New York City. By personifying "dishwashing liquid," she creates potent visual imagery and also speaks of her realization as a natural and inevitable process catalyzed by a particular environment.

Fun Home Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Fun Home is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How does Bechdel characterize herself (in the past) and the rest of her family?

In her memoir, Alison Bechdel writes about the process of discovering that she is attracted to women and coming out to her family at 19. While young Alison faces certain struggles as she attempts to embrace her sexuality, she is able to do so in a...

It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, United States, focusing on her complex relationship with her father. I think during 1970's.

It focuses specifically on the author's parents, Helen and Bruce, and their role in her life. Bechdel builds the narrative around the tragic event of her father's death.

Study Guide for Fun Home

Fun Home study guide contains a biography of Alison Bechdel, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Fun Home
• Fun Home Summary
• Character List

Essays for Fun Home

Fun Home essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.

• Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Michel Foucault’s “Repressive Hypothesis”
• The Valley of the Shadow of Text
• Fun Home and Lacan's Mirror Stage
• Identity Construction in Fun Home
• Suspension of the Imaginary in the Real: Fiction as Truth in the Memoir

Lesson Plan for Fun Home

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Fun Home
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Fun Home Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Fun Home

• Introduction
• Plot summary

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Time to Do: To do everything listed below will take approximately 3 days.

1)      What to do in Moscow – Red Square

2)      What to do in Moscow – The Kremlin

It started as a humble wooden garrison on a hill and turned into one of the biggest and best known fortresses in the world. This is both a very impressive tourist attraction and also the seat of power for Russia with the office of the president inside its walls. It is home to several 500 hundred year old cathedrals, the world renowned Faberge Eggs and also the world’s biggest sapphire (not to mention a 160 carat diamond!). If you want to know more I have a separate post on visiting the Red Square and the Kremlin in Moscow .  Nearest metro: Aleksandrovksy Sad- Dark Blue, Red or Grey lines.

3)      What to do in Moscow – Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery

4)      What to do in Moscow – State Tretyakov Gallery

This is the best collection of Russian Art in the world and was started in the 19 th century by Pavel Tretyakov. If you go and you see how many great paintings he managed to get by himself you can’t help but be impressed. The collection today has 130,000 items! Like most museums it is not possible to see everything in a day and as I don’t know much about art I looked at the more famous painters and some of the paintings and icons are amazing. Even being from poor old Ireland I recognised some of the paintings and here they were in Moscow! Artists such as Repin, Vereshchagin, Surikov, Serov etc etc.  They may not be household names to people not in the know in the west but they still are very impressive. The older paintings of landscapes etc are hard to get excited about but the late 19 th century stuff of poverty and social issues are excellent. The State Tretyakov Gallery is not to be confused with the New Tretyakov Gallery (modern art) which is situated close by. Even to spend 3hrs to half a day here is well worth it. Admission is 400 Ru and 200Ru for photography. http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/

5)      What to do in Moscow – Moscow Metro

If you are visiting Moscow you will undoubtedly be riding the metro unless you are crazy enough to contend with the randomness and traffic of the streets. Moscow’s Metro stations are one of the fanciest in the world. They have tributes to war, peace, women, Ukraine, agriculture, the list goes on and each metro is unique. There are no modern contemporary stations built of glass or modern art but they still are a sight to behold. It is well worth giving yourself more time when going somewhere so you can get off when you see a fancy stop. For more info and the best stations see my other post on the beautiful Moscow Metro.

6)      What to do in Moscow – Park Pobedy / Victory Park

This park doesn’t appear high on many lists but you should definitely pay it a visit. Like many memorials in Moscow it commemorates war and this one is victory in WWII or the Great Patriotic War as they call it in Russia. The large park is great to walk around but the main highlight and close to the metro station is the central avenue which has a fountain for everyday of the war and 10cm for each day on a 142mtr (520ft) high obelisk. Behind the obelisk is the Great Patriotic Museum which goes through artefacts and history of the war including plenty of surviving examples of guns, artillery, coats etc etc. There are some English translations for the main parts but not everything is covered. Admission 250Ru. Just outside Park Pobedy metro is the Triumphal Arch which is a huge arch in the middle of the road to commemorate Napoleon’s defeat in 1812. It was this same hill where Napoleon waited in vain to receive the keys to the Kremlin. Nearest Metro: Park Pobedy – Dark Blue line.

7)      What to do in Moscow – Christ the Saviour Cathedral

8)      What to do in Moscow – Peter the Great Statue and Statue Park (Fallen Monument Park)

The statue park is over the Moskva River to the east in Park Rayon Yakimanka and contains weird statues as well as old USSR statues of the heroes.  Nearest Metro: Kropotkinskaya on the red line or Polyanka on the grey line. Both attractions are in-between the two.

9)      What to do in Moscow – Bolshoi Theatre

The most famous theatre in Moscow and one of foremost theatres in the world and even adorns the 100 Rubles banknote. The company also has the largest ballet in the world. Originally built in 1824 and after a very expensive upgrade in 2011 the Bolshoi is very grand indeed (Bolshoi means grand or big in Russian). The theatre is worth a look from the outside but you cannot get in unless you buy a ticket which without the help of touts outside you must do it well in advance online. It is only a 5 min walk north of the Kremlin so very central. http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/ . Nearest Metro: Teatralnaya on the dark green line

10)   What to do in Moscow – Moscow’s Viewpoint

One of the highest points in Moscow is on the south west of the city close to Moscow State University. This point is located in front of one of Stalin’s huge ‘7 sisters’ buildings and is immediately above where the 1980 Olympic Stadium is.  The view point has free viewing telescopes and it is possible to see both the new and old sides of the city. This is not an unbelievable view or anything but it is good and if you get off at Vorobyevy Gory metro station then there is a pleasant 10min walk up the hill through a park which runs alongside the Moskva River. The viewpoint is on (street) Ul. Kosygina and the Nearest Metro is Vorobyevy Gory on the Red line.

Map of Moscow

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Gallery of What to do in Moscow

About Ross Travellingforfun

When I visited Moscow I visited the Fallen Monument Park. I saw the boat with rabbits as pictured above and I wonder if you know what the story is behind it. Thank you!

Judith, the short answer is I don’t know. I tried to find out but couldn’t find anything on it. They do have works from other artists there so maybe it has some obscure meaning. Sorry I can’t be of help.

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