Cameron's Coming of Age Novel Blog

Normally, I have a hard time getting through a book more than once without losing interest or skipping around to my favorite parts. Even when rereading some of my all time favorite novels I’ll frequently find myself skimming through slower segments of the story or catch myself mindlessly scanning the pages without actually taking anything in. This was surprisingly not the case when for some indiscernible reason I decided to reread Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home twice more over Spring Break.  The best part of rereading a book is always drawing connections that were impossible to make during your initial reading thanks to critical puzzle pieces of information being absent until later in the story. This is especially true in the case of graphic novels since their imagery adds much more for the reader to unpack. Fun Home is no exception. My favorite example of this is one I immediately noticed upon my rereading on the first panel of page 15. While Alison begins to lay out some metaphors t...

What was the purpose of Joan Gilling? Upon my initial reading, I found her character to be needlessly confusing and admittedly couldn’t think of her in any way other than “She’s Esther if her recovery failed.” This still rings somewhat true, but after rereading I realize it’s a whole hell of a lot more complicated and meaningful than that. She’s definitely the hardest character for the reader to understand and come to terms with due to Esther’s distorted depictions of Joan and the (somewhat unlikely) possibility of Esther purely imagining Joan's existence. But, after some rereading, I think I finally understand how this confusion adds to her character, her bond with Esther, and her role in the novel’s tragic themes. Above all else, The Bell Jar is a novel about suicide and depression and would feel incomplete if it didn’t explore the aftermath of taking one's life. However, I don’t think having Esther’s narration continue in whatever afterlife Plath could’ve put her in would...