Understand with Ryland

At the end of Black Swan Green , Jason sees a swan despite his claim throughout the book that “Black Swan Green hasn’t got any swans. That’s the village joke.” Swans have long been a symbol of transformation, a classic example of this is the story of the ugly duckling. Jason’s coming of age is tied in with the idea of the swan and more specifically that his coming of age was inevitable. Firstly, the swan in literature has a relation to transformation. Jason has completed his own transformation at the end of the book, he has come of age as it were. Throughout the year, he has put up with immense bullying and has changed and become a different person than he was at the beginning of the book. He sees the swan in the exact same place that the book began a year ago, on the frozen lake in the woods. This all goes to signify the internal change that has occurred and that Jason has grown up, becoming a beautiful swan himself.  The Goose fair is a moment that defines his coming of age. He h...

In Fun Home , Bechdel draws a parallel between Oscar Wilde’s trial and her father’s own trial. She compares and contrasts the bizarre public trial of Wilde’s homosexuality and the quiet hush-hush of her father’s trial. This is an interesting story to parallel but Bechdel seems to also be comparing her father’s trial to another event: Watergate. This second parallel is not one that Bechdel ever seems to elaborate on unlike Wilde’s but the thought is there. Nixon is ever present in this chapter. Watergate is first mentioned by Bechdel early in the chapter on page 154 when she is recounting how hectic the summer was for her. This is immediately following a scene in which her father talks about his own trial and how he must go to counseling on page 153. Bechdel mentions them both at the same time to loosely show that they were both happening in her life in the summer of 1973. As the chapter goes on, Bechdel makes reference to Watergate a few times. She talks about how it reached a point of...