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The Generational Comparison: Coming Out vs. Staying Hidden

    Fun Home , the “Family Tragicomic,” was introduced to us with the preface of the author, Alison Bechdel, and her queer identity. We’re made aware from the very first chapter that she ‘shared’ with her father this distinctiveness, with one key difference we later find out: The culture of Alison’s time made coming out a possible reality for her, while quite the opposite was the reality for her father. Their experiences with their sexuality demonstrate how important the generational context shapes the story of the Bechdels.       Alison, our author and main protagonist of the book, goes through a journey of self-discovery during a time that provided more space for this sort of exploration that her father, being of the previous generation, was not afforded the luxury of. She, like her father, turns to literature as a means of navigating her individuality, finding pieces of herself in the works she reads. She actively seeks out ways to define what she f...
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How Mental Health Makes it Difficult to “Choose Sides” in The Bell Jar

               According to the World Health Organization, more than one billion people are currently living with mental health disorders, meaning that it affects one out of every eight people. Nowadays, mental health is more often brought up in conversation and addressed rather than stigmatized. With these modern ideas, when going back to read books like The Bell Jar, mental illness complicates the idea of “choosing sides” for the reader, making it harder to pick where our empathy and sympathies lie within the characters of the novel (Esther Greenwood, Mrs. Greenwood, Dodo Conway, etc.)  Esther’s Clinical/Psychotic Depression shapes her narration throughout the book, shadowing over the people she describes rather harshly. Her state makes it hard to be angry at how she treats those around her, even when they’re kind-hearted or people close to her. At the same time, you still really do sympathize with the people she speaks of as they’re o...
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Holden Caufield as a Male SA Victim

  “Boy, I was shaking like a madman. I was sweating, too. When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff’s happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can’t stand it,” (Salinger, 251). J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is a renowned coming-of-age novel focused on the story of Holden Caulfield and his daily endeavours following his expulsion from Pencey Prep. The novel is told in a first-person narrative by Holden, giving the readers a unique look into his inner monologue. We get well acquainted with him throughout the book— his way of thinking, what he likes, what he dislikes (though he has considerably more dislikes than likes). He goes off into tangents very easily about what he witnesses in things and people. Notably though, Holden doesn’t talk about himself as much as you’d assume, seeing that the story is told from his perspective. I feel that one of the most important scenes in the book, if not the most import...
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