Did Bruce Come Of Age?

    “Is it possible to not come of age?” This was a question that was posed on the first day of class along with other debates on what coming of age means, and at the time my answer was no. I believed that because we all age, we all must come of age at some point. I would say this belief still remains in some ways, but in other ways Fun Home certainly challenged this idea for me. Up until Fun Home I found this belief to be running unopposed in my understanding of the concept of Coming-of-age. Both The Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye affirmed this idea by showing that a coming-of-age journey was completely specific and fitted for a specific character. Everyone has a different journey, so it’s impossible to deny that somebody hasn’t already had theirs. The steadiness of my belief prior to Fun Home is really what made Bruce so interesting to me, because, when faced with the question of “Did Bruce come of age?” my immediate answer was no. 

    Luckily, the parallels between Bruce and Alison make it easy to fully understand where this denial of Bruce’s journey strays from, and so I want to begin by discussing how Alison came of age. We practically see Alison’s entire life play out before us, so it’s easy to assume she had to come of age somewhere within that. To pin down an exact transition, I would claim it to be a mixture of three moments. A. Alison’s realization that she is in fact a lesbian. B. Alison’s coming out to her parents. C. Alison’s joining of the Gay Union at her University. Between these moments we can see self acceptance, social growth, and finding community. This is a transition from the awkwardness, and unsureness she felt in her youth. So after events ABC, I would say, Alison comes of age. Personally, I believe it to be a reduction of a real person to claim that Alison Bechdel’s entire transition into adulthood is just finding her identity as a lesbian. However, I think narratively, Fun Home defines the coming-of-age journey as exclusively the journey of accepting a queer identity. 

    So! Similarly, I would not simply say that Bruce Bechdel has never come-of-age… who knows the personal journeys he could have gone on, or exactly what he would consider significant in his life. But, within Fun Home’s constraints surrounding coming-of-age, it is specifically set up to explain that Bruce never came of age. Bruce never accepted his queer identity. He never came out, he never found community, he lived an artificial life in denial of who he truly was. I find Roy another example of how Bruce never moved on from his youth, still entertaining flings with young people instead of finding stability within his queer identity. Because Bruce conforms in direct opposition to the notion of queer-acceptance, he directly opposes the coming-of-age journey in Fun Home.

    All in all, Fun Home has shown me that every narrative has a specific coming of age journey, and if that journey is applicable to characters (even if they are not the narrator or main figure) and they can not defeat the challenges, they will not come of age. Fun Home purposefully uses Bruce as Alison’s foil to emphasize her journey in terms of her sexuality, and show an example of someone who was never able to complete their journey.