She wonders if her father is testing her she doesn't react to the dead body. One day, Bruce calls a teenage Alison into the embalming room while he is preparing a naked male cadaver. Once he finally came home, Bruce's mother put him in the 'oven,' or an old-fashioned cook-stove, to warm him up again (42). Mort Dehaas, the mailman, found him and had to yank him free. Their grandmother likes to tell Alison, Christian, and Jobhn a bedtime story about how when Bruce was a little boy, he got caught in the mud on the family farm. Although it is sometimes creepy to be there at night, the Bechdel kids often sleep over with their paternal grandmother, who lives in front of the funeral home building. However, Alison explains, spending time in the ' Fun Home' also helps the Bechdel children develop an insensitivity to death. Having a family funeral home business casts a pervasive aura of gloom over Alison's existence she also compares her appearance to Wednesday Addams's. Young Alison sees a connection between her own family and the Addams family, whom she reads about in cartoons. Soon thereafter, Alison's youngest brother, John, is born. Helen gives birth to Alison and then Christian one year later, and Bruce begins teaching English at the local high school. Bechdel's parents, who are expecting their first child, return to Pennsylvania to take over the family funeral home business. They live in West Germany until Bruce's father (Alison's paternal grandfather) has a heart attack. Helen (Alison's mother) flies there to marry him. The narrative flashes back to when young Bruce Bechdel was stationed in Europe. Both Bruce and Helen Bechdel encouraged Alison and her brothers to leave once they were grown. She cannot understand why her cultured parents, especially her mother (who studied acting in New York City), would have chosen to remain in a small Pennsylvania town for their entire lives. Bechdel reveals that her mother had asked her father for a divorce two weeks before he died.īechdel marvels at the fact that her father spent his whole life in a relatively limited geographical area. Then, she admits that she might just have convinced herself that her father's death was intentional because it is less painful for her that way. Although there is no definitive proof, Bechdel points to several pieces of circumstantial evidence that support her conclusion. Bechdel believes that he committed suicide. This chapter begins with a drawing of a newspaper headline, which Bechdel uses to reveal that her father died after being hit by a truck.

The fun home