The Virgin Suicides - Blog #3

"He laid his head back on the headrest and opened his mouth to ease the constriction in his chest, when suddenly the air inside the car churned. He felt himself grasped by his long lapels, pulled forward and pushed back, as a creature with a hundred mouths started sucking the marrow from his bones. She said nothing as she came on like a starved animal...He felt her clammy shins, her hot knees, her bristly thighs, and then with terror he put his finger in the ravenous mouth of the animal leashed below her waist...Two beasts lived in the car, one above, snuffling and biting him, and one below, struggling to get out of its damp cage" (85-86).

This passage describes the sexual experience that Trip has with Lux in his car. After a frustrating and unsuccessful ordeal watching Disney movies at the Lisbon house, Lux appears in Trip's car and starts violently making out with him. This passage employs many similes, metaphors, and animal-like diction to create an image of Lux as a violent, hungry beast and characterizes her as being promiscuous and aggressive. This greatly contradicts any earlier characterizations of the Lisbon girls as being polite, timid, and pure. The descriptions of Lux are very beastly because she is like a caged animal--she's stuck in her house under her parents' very strict rules, so when she has an opportunity for freedom she seizes it and goes wild. This experience was also very significant for Trip. The touching imagery (forgot the proper word for it) when the "clammy shins," "hot knees," and "bristly thighs" are described emphasize the physical aspects of this event and show how clearly Trip remembers this (being that the narrators are speaking based on information they got from Trip later in life). This event totally shocked Trip and because Trip really liked Lux so much, this was a very significant point in Trip's road to maturity as well.

The Virgin Suicides - Blog #2

"The diary is an unusual document of adolescence in that it rarely depicts the emergence of an unformed ego. The standard insecurities, laments, crushes, and daydreams are nowhere in evidence. Instead, Cecilia writes of her sisters and herself as a single entity...we could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl...we knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them" (42-44).

This passage about Cecilia's diary is interesting because it reveals information about both Cecilia and the narrators of the novel. The narrators describe Cecilia writing like all the sisters were a "single entity," which I find interesting because I think this may connect to the fact that all of the girls later kill themselves. As the boys read the diary, they emphatize with Cecilia, and I feel like they also become part of that "single entity" with the sisters as they try to understand their story. Throughout the long paragraph (which I did not copy completely), the boys repeatedly start their sentences with "we knew" and then go into detail about some fact about Cecilia's life. They're so wrapped up into the Lisbon girls' life, which is actually kind of freaky. These boys (now men I suppose), do everything they can to gather information about and piece together the story of the sisters. As I read, I'm questioning why they are so obsessed with these girls and why the author chose to tell the story from this point of view. I think it partially adds to the weird effect of the novel since the boys are so creepy and stalker-ish. I wonder if the reason for this unique point of view will become more apparent as I continue to read the novel...