Lemberg, Jennifer. “Closing the Gap in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Feminist Press, 2 June 2008, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/238093.
Thesis: “Fun Home asserts that the value of comics as a medium for bearing witness and insists on the calidity of Bechdel’s perspective in refiguring the image of her family,” (9).
Lemberg asserts that Fun Home exemplifies the strengths of combining graphic visuals with tasty narrative, culminating a moving and compelling piece of literature.
Structure: Lemberg starts with a quick and accurate summary of the graphic memoir. She fluidly moves towards her thesis, beginning the argument that words, combined with images, can “bear a complex relationship to each other,” (2). She then moves towards providing evidence for her thesis, analyzing the ways in which Bechdel weaves together these complex relationships within her novel. She moves towards analyzing her drawings and methods of manipulating the gutter. Finally, Lemberg returns to her thesis, pulling it all together.
Hook: The author starts with a brief overall summary of the novel.
Evidence: Lemberg uses an abundance of evidence throughout this article. She uses it to reinforce the idea that graphics supplement writing.
Theoretical foundations: Lemberg also uses theoretical foundations, one of which being the “Circle of post memory,” (9)
Rhetorical Strategies:
- Quotations with beautiful word sandwiches
- Ample references to evidence ready for analysis
- Topic sentences in each paragraph that further support the thesis without becoming repetitive
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