39 pages • 1 hour read
John BarthLost in the Funhouse
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Ambrose
Ambrose appears in three stories and is the only recurring main character. Ambrose narrates “Ambrose His Mark,” and also becomes subject to the third-person narrator in “Water-Message” and “Lost In The Funhouse.” We meet Ambrose at different times in his life: as a baby, a fearful schoolboy member of the local Sphinxes, and as a romancing teen who gets lost in the metaphorical funhouse, in the titular story. That he shifts from narrator to narrated signals important gestures from Barth. The details we learn about Ambrose characterize our understanding of how Ambrose thinks of himself philosophically, but we learn less about how he felt during those experiences. Bart wants to circumnavigate this sort of dramatic development and exposition. Still, in Ambrose, we perceive attempts by Barth to weave a character through Lost in the Funhouse who can represent the very shift in narrative technique and satirizing that encompasses Barth’s self-reflexive goal.
Menelaiad
In Menelaiad–Barth’s fictional reimagining of the Odyssey’s Menelaus–we see Barth’s theme of merging the mythic and personal take new shape. Giving voice to mythological figures suggest the power of invention and language. In the Odyssey, one reason the Trojan War begins is because Paris steals away with Helen, Menelaus’ wife. In Lost in the Funhouse, Odysseus’ children visit Menelaiad to hear his recounting of Menelaus’ pursuit of Helen. Menelaiad gets teased and hears Helen’s own version of accounts.
Anonymiad
Anonymiad is the minstrel chosen by Agamemnon to spy on Clytemnestra while Agamemnon is away fighting the Trojan War. If only a minor character in the Odyssey, Barth raises the minstrel to heroic proportions, but not without poking fun at ideals of love and the traditional hero’s-quest narrative. Anonymiad is reborn here as a major player, yet, as the story progresses, he and we become less confident of his identity. Through suggestion and word games, we’re left to wonder if Anonymiad is the minstrel, the narrator of Lost in the Funhouse, or Barth himself.
