Throughout the story, Jason constantly mentions his grandfather's Omega Seamaster De Ville. To me, it seems like the watch becomes a barrier between his childhood and the adult world, and I think his interactions with the watch reveal a lot about his struggle to come of age and maturity. Part of what I think is interesting is how the Omega is framed as a reward for being mature enough. Jason’s dad is "grave as grave" when he gives it to him, calling it a "sign of an excellent watch" (Mitchell 16) because of its thinness and elegance, unlike the "plastic tubs" other teenagers wear. Even though he’s proud of it, he’s terrified of it. He balances a coin on the hiding place just to make sure no one has touched it. He is mortified when he breaks it playing British Bulldogs, and spends a year keeping it secret and trying to find a replacement. Jason’s decision to return Ross Wilcox’s wallet, despite knowing the money inside could buy back his Omega, is reall...
Introduced halfway through Fun Home, Alison’s childhood diary serves as both a window to her past and her psyche. What begins as a simple record of daily life, meant to rid of her OCD, quickly spirals into an obsessive-compulsive ritual of recognizing and confronting her own reality. Alison becomes haunted by the fear that her written words are lies, that by simply stating "I went to the park," she is committing a lie because she cannot be 100% certain of the absolute, objective truth of the event. To cope, she begins inserting a small symbol (人) between her words to signify "I think,” in order to protect herself from being dishonest in her own narrative. As her anxiety grows, the symbols begin to take over her diary, in a sense rewriting what she knows about her past. Alison begins to draw huge versions of the symbol all over the paper in order to save time, physically obscuring what she even says in the first place. In the beginning she notes: “Then I realized I could ...