The novel, Virgin Suicides, written by Jeffrey Eugenides, tells the story of the suicides of the 5 Lisbon sister and the boys of the neighborhood that watch them try to uncover why they would do this to themselves. The boys are seemingly obsessed with the girls prior to each of their suicides. During our final meeting, my philoso-fam and I came to believe the book shows us that suicide is a real problem and that there are real people that feel that suicide is the only answer and regardless if we know why they want to we should try to help them and show them this isn’t the way out of their situation. With suicide being the main issue present in this novel I began to wonder are we (we being people I'm general) never really able to fully grasp the intensity of another's problems and struggles through our own eyes.
To start off we are present with the youngest of the sisters, Cecelia, who is the first to attempt suicide, how ever fails(succeeding in her second attempt). We see that Cecelia, after attempting to commit suicide, goes to a psychiatrist, whom she tells "obviously you've never been a 13 year old girl". From what we know, we see that even though Cecelia isn't living the quote unquote perfect life it's a life many of us think we could get by living. However, this line shows us that through our eyes and the eyes of the neighborhood boys she lived an okay life. Whereas in her eyes she felt unsatisfied and lost. We (the readers and the boys) aren't able to fully understand Cecelia's issues and therefore aren't really able to help her, people, anyone could've told her that suicide isn't/wasn't the answer but to her it would've been just that, us telling her not to do it. Not us understanding, grasping and really knowing how she feels and what she goes though.
Next we see Lux Lisbon, who most times is having sex with different and many different and unusual times. Lux, evidently is the most rebellious of the sisters. Her parents pre and post Cecelia's suicide have been nothing but overbearing and overprotective towards her and her sisters. Lux, being a regular teenager wants to rebel and be more than the prisoner of her parents and uses smoking and sex to this. But, it could also be that her parents display no variety emotion towards Lux and the girls, always doing things to "protect" them. With love missing from her parents, the people we all want to love and think we are special she could use sex as a way to get 5 minutes of love, even if it is from a stranger. The love they give her she uses to replace the void left by her parents. I think Lux's ultimate reason for her suicide was this. No one would ever really be able to tell because when you see her she's never really displaying an aura of pain or hurt. And her parents wouldn't be anole to tell because they think they are doing what's best for her and to protect her.
Lastly, we see Mr. Lisbon who seemingly goes along with his wife's over controlling nature. However we get this sense of him wanting to be free from the intense rule and, be "normal" like the other families of the neighborhood. We can see this in the novel when the narrator describes all the neighborhood fathers coming together and burning all the fallen leaves of the passing fall. But, Mrs. Lisbon, being intensely worried the fire would grow to be uncountable eradicated any fun Mr. Lisbon would have. I think Mr. Lisbon is able to feel the pain and struggle of the girls, but is too afraid of his wife to Wally help it do anything about it. Even though Mr. Lisbon himself did not commit suicide you can still get a sense that he is struggling as well as the girls and that his wife doesn't really understand that these rules and lifestyle aren't really helping anyone.
To conclude it seems the cause of all the pain, struggling and absence of love is caused unintentionally by Mrs. Lisbon. She tries to use these rules as a way to show that she cares for and loves them all but it's misconceived. Lastly, we see that no one is ever really able to fully grasp the pain of someone else and no one is really able to fully understand why people have the thoughts they do.
RIP Lux, Cecelia, Bonnie, Therese and Mary Lisbon.
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