Funeral House

Funeral House –  Talking about the book with passion, rather than meticulous analysis, impresses me more. Objectifying the book to such an extent risks undermining the enjoyment of reading. The Funeral House / Festival House, which I was very impressed with, made me feel responsible for the book in this context. The most important relationship I established with the book: I was filled with love for the book inside and out. So after we’ve said the most important thing about the book, we can move on to the details.

Funeral House

It is a work in the category of comics or graphic novels, which I have read much more recently. Elements such as awakening, creating an identity, and normalizing have been given quite successfully. In particular, it is clearly given that life is a constructed process. Of course, if this life is an intellectual life. In fact, the only source of nourishment for this life is literature. The resource in question serves as a mortar not only for the installation and construction process, but also for self-creation. It gives depth to the person and therefore the character will also get its share of the same depth. Just like in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Person mentioned in the book.

In this autobiographical work, we have three well-drawn portraits. These people are Alison and her parents who relay the story to us. Particular attention will be paid to father and daughter. Because the sexual identity of the two characters is also a mystery. Alison only realizes when she’s a teenager, but she has a habit of sneaking in her father’s clothes as a child. Thirty years in between, the father’s encounter with his identity is more complex. As a teenager in a homophobic world, the father did not take risks and kept his identity secret. A father who wouldn’t need to explain it for a lifetime if he wasn’t complaining.

In fact, the narrative in no way lays the groundwork for us to feel sad and happy for these three characters. Because the characters are neither good nor bad, they live the destiny presented to them in the peculiar practices of life. Obsessive types… The girl’s telling of the father by analogy with the ancient architect Dedalus (Daidalos) at the beginning was actually a sign of where we opened the bench.

However, the characters of the father and daughter were different. The protagonists of father and daughter were different, except that it was explained by the relationship between Stefan Dedalus and Orlando Bloom, or between Dedalus and Ikaros. The death of the existentialist father at the same age as Camus, again by being run over by a car, was a mystery for the girl as well. It is clear that Oscar Wilde, Scott Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, Salinger, Hemingway, Camus and Colette played the leading roles in the construction of the characters. Names that we consider as direct agents in the process of creating self and identity of both characters, with one or more of their works or important characters. For example, we can say that Alison faced her lesbian identity thanks to Colette.

Not only the portrait, but also the relationships of the three characters are valuable. These people are different islands in the same house. They are so close to each other and yet so far away. The mother character is not someone who talks less and acts more. He says a lot, even if he doesn’t say anything. In this respect, they seem to have a stance that does not care about their characters, identities and personalities. It’s like realizing that everything is interrelated, like pieces of a puzzle. At least that’s how I felt. Of course, the relationship between the father and the daughter dominates the narrative. It is as if the strict attitude of the father determined the distance between the two in this relationship, whose bets we mostly made above. But you don’t realize that this is a planned situation.

The narrative, in this state, establishes ties instead of saying something clear, draws attention to the relationship and non-relationship, and thus puts the reader into crisis instead of saying anything, and does not directly say what he says; It has a structure that tries to say by distributing and opening. The reader in crisis will also find his own way in that chain of text, and will determine his own normals.