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Analysis of the virgin suicides
The virgin suicides 1999 analysis
The virgin suicides 1999 analysis
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The Virgin Suicides is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel written in 1993 by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was his debut novel. It centers on a group of unnamed neighborhood boys who are captivated by the five mysterious Lisbon sisters. The book was critically acclaimed for its unique first person plural narrative and received numerous awards. The book originally appeared as a short story that won an Aga Khan Prize for Fiction in 1991. The short story eventually developed into the first chapter of The Virgin Suicides. In 1999, the book was adapted into a film by renowned director Sofia Coppola. It has appeared on numerous “Must read” lists including, one by actor James Franco, and another by author Patrick Ness. In the novel, Eugenides explores the lives of the Lisbon family, the neighborhood boys, and Trip Fontaine.
The Lisbon family has always been a source of fascination to their 1960s suburban neighborhood. Mr. Lisbon, a high school math teacher, has trouble socializing with the other neighborhood fathers and Mrs. Lisbon, a religious fanatic, does not allow her daughters to wear makeup or anything deemed scandalous (Griffith). Kenneth Womack stated, “Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon exert a similar, if not more totalitarian sense of parental control as their five daughters plunge into the enervating throes of adolescence. The Lisbon parents, jostled by fears of the rampant promiscuity sometimes desired by pubescent girls en route to sexual maturity, inhibit excessive amounts of social interaction between their daughters and others in their age bracket of the opposite sex.” After the suicides of the Lisbon daughters, many people hold the parents to blame, including themselves. This guilt eventually leads to their divorce years later; something the Cat...
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...ides." Mosaic [Winnipeg] 40.3 (2007): 157+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.
McCloy, Kristin. "Highbrow Horror." Los Angeles Times Book Review (20 June 1993): 2. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 212. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Shostak, Debra. "'A Story We Could Live With': Narrative Voice, the Reader, and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides." Modern Fiction Studies 55.4 (Winter 2009): 808-832. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 312. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Turrentine, Jeff. "She's Come Undone." Los Angeles Times Book Review (1 Sept. 2002): 3. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 212. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.
Wershoven, Carol. "Insatiable Girls." Child Brides and Intruders. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993. 92-99. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 157. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Booth, Alison, and Kelly Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010.
In the story, “The Killing Game”, Joy Williams, uses several diffenent types of writing skills to presuade the reader to see her views.
Morgan, J. The biology of horror: gothic literature and film. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.
“Short Stories." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010. 125-388. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. VALE - Mercer County Community College. 28 February 2014
Parker, Emma. "A New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's Beloved." Twentieth Century Literature 47.1 (2001): 1. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Un-Utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (Spring 1996): 3-23. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 May 2014.
...d. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 254. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2008. 287-89. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
Point of view is very important when it comes to writing, especially fiction books. The point of view determines through whose eyes the reader experiences the story. There are various types of different point of views and each one has their strengths and weaknesses. In the Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, the point of view used is an unusual one. The narrator speaks in first person plural, “we” which allows the reader to see things from the perspectives of a group of teenage boys. Although the "we" narrator is meant to form a connection between the narrator and the reader, the reader is not able to rely on the narrator for reliable information. Eugenides had structured the book to include an unreliable “we” narrator for various reasons.
Middlesex, the enticing and controversial epic of a young hermaphrodite’s journey toward self-discovery by Pulitzer Prize winning author Jeffrey Eugenides, adopts Grand Trunk Station in Detroit as the metaphorical center of the Stephanides families evolution and demonstrates how modernization and conformity can transform, be it for better or for worse.
Eugenides writes a powerful novel pertaining to many aspects of being a teenager, and his purpose for writing the novel is exemplified in the way he writes about life, sex, love, and death surrounding the Lisbon girls. Throughout the novel, Eugenides makes a commentary on the different attitudes towards the suicides, and how none of them are really correct in terms of the girls. For the families of the town, “the Lisbon girls became a symbol of what was wrong in the country,” and they did not know how to deal with the suicides other than “[donating] a bench in their memory (226).” Eugenides makes it clear that while everyone had their own ways of trying to understand and deal with their suicides, they never truly understood the motives of the girls. While no one understood their suicide, the boys never really understood the Lisbon girls as a whole, despite being so obsessed with them.
Allen, Woody. Death Knocks. 1968. Approaching Literature: Reading + Thinking + Writing. 3rd ed. Ed. Peter Shakel and Jack Ridl. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 1066-1072. Print.
Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002) null03, Questia, Web, 29 May 2010.
The detriment of institutional racism affected everyone specially Pecola, a young girl who longs for blue eyes in hopes to be as pretty as a white girl whom everybody lauds.