Coming of Age

 In Fun Home, Bruce has an "awesome capacity for cognitive dissonance" about his family. He wants them to be like the perfect families in his books — with a mother and father who fell in love at first sight who live in a richly furnished house. At the same time, Bruce cheats on his wife with young boys, and focuses more on the looks of the house rather than the people living inside of it. Although we don't know what he is thinking, he doesn't seem to be aware of the dissonance between his actions and expectations.  The phrase "awesome capacity for cognitive dissonance" is used to describe Bruce on page 199, when he talks about Mr. Antolini turning out to not be a good friend because he makes a 'pass' at Holden. He talks about this to a class that includes a student that Alison implies he is sexually involved with. If he is aware of his parallels to Mr. Antolini, he never shows it. Instead, he seems to think of himself as similar to Fitzgerald, his fa...

Even before Esther is officially deemed fit to be released from the asylum, she knows that the bell jar that had been suffocating her before had lifted. Although she doesn't know for certain whether it will ever return, she feels newly empowered to continue with life. The reason for this is that she no longer has the looming pressure of people expecting her to be great in the future. These expectations that people had before of Esther were a major part of why she attempted to commit suicide. Esther was a high-achieving, straight-A student who was able to go to college through the many scholarships that she earned. She is able to skip being graded on a required class because of everyone's belief that she would have aced the course anyway. As a result of her previous achievements, she begins feeling pressure to be great even after graduating college, which she's not sure how to do in the absence of grades and papers. During her New York internship, when Esther realizes for th...