Location, Location, Location: a Brief Analysis


In “Fun Home,” Proust is said to assign people to locations and then convolute their identities to the place to which they belong. We know from page 30 and many descriptions throughout the book, that Bruce Bechdel lived and died in Beech Creek. What does this say about him? And what does it say about Allison that she didn’t stay there?


At first, through Alison’s eyes, we see Beach Creek as a small, limited place– a place for fake scholars and real bumpkins. As Alison grows older, however, she comes to realize that there’s a gay bar (Bechdel, 223). The reason Alison originally wasn’t aware of the gay bar is because it is secret– you sneak in, you sneak out– in the back of a regular topless bar. This gay bar itself represents a facet of Bruce; he is aware of who he is, and so are those others sneaking around, but it is a dirty secret to be kept hidden. He is out to himself, and a few others, but he cannot live this truth in light.


Alison, on the other hand, joined a group as soon as she found out about her fruity nature. She felt cool for it: “The notion that my sordid personal life had some sort of larger import was strange, but seductive” (Bechdel, 80) She even phoned home and told her parents when she knew. For which she was nervous, sure, but it was public. This contrast is something we see throughout the book– escaping beech creek and liberating herself in this hero’s journey is something her father only half does.


Bruce did travel Europe, he was off in cities after he was off at war, but he got pulled back in. He even admits that he never considered coming out: “I don’t think I ever considered it till I was over thirty,” and “...I find it hard to see advantages even if I had done so when I was young,” (Bechdel, 211) Still, he thought coming out wouldn’t change. Maybe it was the time, or maybe it was him, but it seems that where you are is who you become, and it all ties back into the hero’s journey.

Comments

  1. Lucas T.April 6, 2026 at 10:35 AM

    Hi Sophie, I love that last line! If there had to be a 'moral' of this story, I could certainly see this being one. Also just great writing style in general, setting up a question then answering it. Fun reading about Fun Home!

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  2. MitchellApril 6, 2026 at 1:56 PM

    It's possible to see that brief sojourn in Europe as making the compromises represented by Beech Creek even more unbearable for Bruce--he's had this glimpse of an other, more cosmopolitan and sophisticated life, and we can read him as seeing himself in some ways as "too good" for Beech Creek. He certainly is uninspired as a teacher, and the blame seems to fall on his students, for not being "worth" teaching to the extent that Alison herself is. They are bored and disconnected in his classes, even while he's teaching an awesome book like _Catcher in the Rye_ to what sounds like a pretty cool coming-of-age-novel class called Rites of Passage. The novel opens with Daedalus/Icarus and the motif of flight, and a crucial subtext here is Joyce's _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_: in that novel, the artist-protagonist (named for Daedalus) decides he must flee Ireland forever, abandoning family, nationalism, politics, and the church in order to be "free" as an artist. Alison follows this same model, finding her identity as a person and as an artist when she leaves Beech Creek for college (and later NYC). So Bruce is, basically, a case of "failure to launch." He was already married to Helen when in Germany, so who knows where this story would have gone in its alternate timeline, but the idea seems clear that there is no real space for him to grow in Beech Creek. That one graphic, where we see Bruce's birthplace, home, place of death, and burial site within a narrow range, represents "a solipsistic circle of self" (140).

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  3. Ashton R.H's Blog!April 8, 2026 at 11:33 AM

    I agree that location is very much worth exploring in Fun Home. While you may see Bruce as repressed because he lived in a small town without a significant queer scene, you're also confronted with the fact that not only was there an underground gay bar in Beech Creek, but Bruce traveled across Europe and chose to come back. I think this shows how we can really use location as the only reason Bruce remained closeted. Its interesting to see the opportunities he had to be himself, even if in a hidden gay club, that he shot down. I agree that setting matters in the hero's journey, and while Alison used Beech Creek as a symbol of what she had to escape (conformity, etc), Bruce was ultimately sucked back in.

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