Top Dawg Blawg

       I have heard the saying "kids are perfect mirrors of their parents" many times before. As young children, we imitate our parents, absorb information from them, and develop a perception of the world through them. The connection between a child and a parent goes much deeper than learning lessons from them. As products of our parents, we are able to understand them on a sort of below the surface level. By this I mean that some things can be communicated between children and parents without the use of words, and some of these things we don't even realize we are absorbing. In the final chapter of Fun Home , Alison spends time talking about and reflecting on her last interactions with her father (Bruce). While acknowledging that Alison's father has done some things wrong in his life, Alison focuses more on his positive aspects and how her father made profound impacts on her throughout the time she spent with him. The impacts her father made on her played a pivotal r...

      The metaphorical use of a "bell jar" as a force that descends upon Esther, severely deteriorating her mental state and bringing her close to death on multiple occasions, was an idea that I found particularly interesting. It reminded me of the scene in the movie Coco (a movie that is essentially all about death), where the famous singer and guitar player Ernesto de la Cruz is killed by a bell that falls on him. The title of the final song he played and his actual last words "remember me" allude to denouement, which also reminded me of Esther's frequent references to her own death. The use of bell-shaped objects in the two stories (the latter mentioned story uses an actual bell) as a force that brings death was an unusual connection that for some reason stuck out to me. Throughout Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar , the metaphorical use of a descending and rising bell jar to describe Esther's recurring bouts with severe depression arise multiple times thro...