Death equaling Freedom

At first I didn’t like the story “Fun house” at all. After discussing the story in class, and doing some more reading I realized there’s a lot more to the story than I initially thought. One of the topics we discussed in class is one that I found extremely interesting. “Death equaling freedom”. I agreed with this statement, I think that the father committed suicide because he looked at death as the only way to achieve freedom. With situations in the story, and his facial expressions throughout the book, I believe this this is true. The father in the story started off carefree and happy, if not happy than content. He was not only in the army, but over sees, and traveling the world. He was also falling in love, with his lifestyle, and also the woman that soon became his wife. That freedom and independence was ripped away due to unfortunate family circumstances. Already we see that the father was beginning to be trapped in a lifestyle that wasn’t of his choice completely. The misery continued because throughout the story we see that he was also trapped within his sexuality. The father was forced by society, and fear, into not being able to express himself freely. He was trapped not only because he had a family, but because the time period the story takes place in, was not a time period when homosexuality was looked at as acceptable. The father finally comes out of the closet to his daughter, in the 80s, when being gay was starting to become in a way more known, and acceptable. I think all through the fathers life he was unable to relate to anyone, and one his daughter ‘came out’ it gave him the courage to do so also. This wasn’t enough however, because it was too late for him to start his life. Again the feeling of being trapped comes into play, the father is trapped in his own life, a prisoner of decisions he made in the past, and regret, and misery plagued his life, taking from his freedom. In my opinion the only way for him to feel alive again was for him to end his own life. Death became a way to become free again, the father believed he had to die, in order to be reborn, and this is why I believe he committed suicide.