Topic > Pure melancholy vs. False Happiness: Reading The Virgin Suicides

In The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides has the narrators describe seemingly average everyday events as extraordinary, showing the search for something more meaningful in their uniform lives, designed to be perfect. Through the narrators' exaggerations, it is evident that the boys become more and more obsessed with the smallest details of the Lisbon girl's life until they become their top priority. Observing the Lisbons becomes their sole purpose in life, forcing the kids to stop sustaining the perfect suburban illusion that many have tried so hard to sustain. They wistfully dedicate their entire lives to dwelling on deceased girls, suggesting that the false satisfaction that originates from constructed perfection is actually necessary for suburban happiness. While Eugenides shows the depressing confinement of perfect suburban life, the boys' exaggerated descriptions ultimately demonstrate that "freedom" is more harmful; their inevitable infatuation caused by deviation from the standard lifestyle paints their escape into melancholy as a fate worse than false happiness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Eugenides asks guys to describe average interactions with Lisbon girls as amazing to show their desire to find something important in their typical, boring lives and establish their increasingly harmful obsession. Before the boys knew anything about the Lisbon girls, Peter Sissen was invited to have dinner with the Lisbon family and recounted his experience: “In the garbage can there was a Tampax, stained, still fresh from the bowels of one of the Lisbon girls. Lisbon. Sissen said he wanted to bring it to us, that it wasn't something gross but beautiful, it had to be seen, like a modern painting or something..." (8). Their detailed description of the tampon “fresh from the bowels of one of the Lisbon girls”, demonstrates the boys' absolute fascination with this unknown object and with the girls themselves. The word “fresh” seems particularly important to them, as it implies not only a recent contact, but that this recent contact is attractive and seductive. It may be understandable that tampons are foreign to boys, but girls don't describe them as "cool" either. The word "beautiful" demonstrates their complete adoration for girls, as everything that comes into contact with them is amazing, even a used sanitary pad. The association with a “modern painting” also goes beyond beauty, implying elegance and a deeper meaning. The tampon means nothing to the girls, but the boys find it surprising and significant, showing their naive admiration for the girls right from the start. Furthermore, the fact that a tampon can have so much meaning to them means that they don't have many truly meaningful things in their lives, demonstrating the boredom and pointlessness of typical suburban life. Later, all the kids are invited to a party at the Lisbon house. The boys describe the scene vividly: The steps were steep and metal-tipped, and as we descended, the light at the bottom grew brighter and brighter, as if we were approaching the molten core of the earth. When we reached the last step the effect was blinding... On a card table, the punch bowl erupted lava. The paneled walls glowed and for the first few seconds the Lisbon girls were just a blur of light, like a congregation of angels (23). The description of the stairs as “steep and metal-tipped” provides a starkness and anticipation to the moment, along with the increasingly bright light. The ideaof "approaching the molten core of the earth" suggests approaching a hellish state, which is further accentuated by the "punch bowl [that] has spewed lava" and ominous descriptions such as "shimmer[ing]" and "metal". " This contradicts the description of the girls as “a bright spot like a congregation of angels”. The association with angels takes admiration to a new level, suggesting that the girls equate to something holy and divine. Since visiting Lisbon is not a common occurrence, boys deviate, even if only slightly, from their traditional life; however, they immediately descend into hell, proving that there are immense consequences in defying the norms that they see girls as angels is a mere illusion, the boys put them on an irrational pedestal; angels could not be found in hell. Their unrealistic description demonstrates their hunger for something fascinating, but their disappointment becomes a consequence of trying too hard to abandon the worldly norm Having read Cecilia's diary, the boys say: “We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with the same skin, and that they knew everything about us even if we couldn't imagine them at all” (40). The boys' reaction is extremely dramatic; the word “imprisonment” implies perpetual oppression, and the “active and dreaming” mind implies creativity and irrationality, all based fundamentally on emotion. However, it was previously revealed that Cecilia only described daily events in her diary, such as the meals she and her sisters ate, and never her own emotions. It's ridiculous that boys feel such a dramatic and passionate shift towards such simple voices, further establishing their imaginary bond with girls. Furthermore, they believe that the girls are their "twins, that we all existed in space like animals with the same skin..." Since the emotional connection with the girls is clearly made up, so is the idea that they are even physically identical , which "the twins" suggests. Even the strange description of “animals with identical skin” is illogical because humans are animals and have skin. “Animals” implies a natural, primal connection, but even that is unlikely considering they draw this conclusion from Cecilia's diary, which was rather superficial. The boys are now deepening their investigation, as they have actually collected written evidence from the girls, exposing their worrying obsession. As the boys become entranced by the girls' lives, they ignore their seemingly flawless lives and drift away from the suburban dollhouse lifestyle, until they are finally trapped in a cycle of melancholy investigation. Although Eugenides shows that counterfeit happiness and rigorous perfection in the periphery can lead to a feeling of inadequacy and confinement through the girls of Lisbon, the descriptions of the boys, which previously expressed a worrying obsession, become an even more confining infatuation and ultimately they demonstrate that deviating from constructed happiness leads to inevitable distress. The guys interviewed Trip years after he'd been with Lux. They describe their findings: “He'd just tell us, 'I never got over that girl, man. Never.' In the desert, with the shocks, he had lumps of sickly-looking yellow skin under his eyes, but the eyes themselves clearly looked back to a verdant time” (71). Lux spent time with many boys and men to relieve social pressure, illustrating,.