Coming of Age - Connor Guarnieri

 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is an autobiographical analysis of young Allison Bechdel, who is reflecting on her past, with a fresh perspective on her life. She is assessing her fathers death, or suicide as she thinks, and using this to paint a picture of her father, one she had not done as a child. The whole basis of her claim, the one where Bruce committed suicide, is not completely unfounded, but takes a little too many liberties. Throughout the book, Allison debates continuously about her own importance to her father, and if that meant anything in the light of his death. She almost wishes for this to be true. "And with my fathers death falling so hard on the heels of this doleful coming out party, I could not but help but assume a cause and effect relationship" pg. 59. She very clearly states that she believes that her fathers death had something to do with her. The problem with this assumption is the strained relationship we see earlier in the book, where her father see...

  Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar is filled to the brim with symbolism and meaning, and details the story of young Esther Greenwood's breakdown. Esther tells the reader how she has a metaphorical "bell jar" around her "... wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or in a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air". This bell jar follows her throughout the entire book, but thankfully by the end, she recognizes that it has been lifted, but it will always remain. During an in class discussion, I noticed how symbolic my book cover was, and wanted to expand on this symbolism in this blog.  Literally, a bell jar is a glass casing used for creating a vacuum, usually made for science experiments or gardening. This leads me to the cover of the book. The flower represents Esther, which was trapped in the figurative bell jar. We learn very quickly in the book that Esther is very unwell, and struggling with s...