Here are some of my classmate’s comments that I found insightful.
The actions such as putting on the clothes in the correct and restarting if done wrongly, doing an incantation when going through doorways and not wearing a brand of t-shirt on a specific day, is portrayed as almost ridiculous and slightly humorous. This humour, even if dark, almost normalizes obsessive compulsive disorder and paints the disorder as a reality for the people who have it. By Diana
—When I read the scene that she mentioned, I did notice how the OCD was ridiculed, but I didn’t notice how it somehow normalises it with the way she wrote it. I thought this comment was insightful because she was looking from the point of view of people who have OCD, and finding it’s coming treatment from there.
What makes it even more “comic” is Bechdel’s face: with her wide-eyed expression while she is eating cereal branded “Life”. That panel with the cereal might be a considered ironic because it shows the principal aspects in the cliched expectation of adult life — work, marriage, and children. By Maxine
—I was impressed by her close observation of the panel, and at the same time, the irony, Alison’s feelings and Bechdel’s observation all seemed to make sense with what she found out.
Prompt: Choose one moment – or a pattern of small instances – in Chapters 3-5, which you think best illustrates Bechdel’s comic treatment of a serious (global) issue and what it achieves.
This is what I wrote:
In the panel of page 125, Bechdel presents issues of suicide and death in a black, sarcastic way. In the first panel, Bechdel shows Alison getting so irritated with the ignorance of the visitors, that she starts telling the truth to a visitor in a very arrogant way. However, in the second panel, we are told that that was only a hypothetical scenario, and that the real Alison is answering the man with no expression on her face. This unexpectedness provokes laughter amongst us, although Alison seems to be in big confusion and irritation. Also, the vocabulary used by Alison is insulting and rude, and also used in a clever way, which can also make us smile.
By using humour like this, Bechdel makes the topic of her father’s death seem lighter and easier to talk about. When we think about our families’ death, we often find it difficult to do so. However, because there is more sarcasm than grief expressed, Bechdel avoids the readers to be immersed in the emotions, so that when we move on, we can focus on the mystery and the factual components of her father’s death. This can encourage readers to think about death and suicide in another perspective, not from an emotional point of view.