The Virgin Suicides: Youth and Lost Innocence

A detailed Summary of The Virgin Suicides: Youth and Lost Innocence

The novel The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides can be described as a novel about youth and lost innocence, a perennial subject for novelists, but treated in this novel in a different and highly effective way. The novel is set in the 1970s well into Middle American territory, raising all of the social attitudes of that time and place and showing once more that youth is not always the innocent time adults would like to believe it to be.

For that mater, the comfortable existence of the people in this novel is itself an illusion. The novel is set at a time when many of their verities were being challenged by change in the country, change that middle-class Americans resisted and that in some ways left them behind. This community was the result of white flight to suburbia from a decade before, with the men (primarily) traveling some distance to work in the city, then to return home to the suburbs. The streets of suburbia are regular and much the same for block after block, allowing those who lived there to be with people just like themselves, in some ways fearful of people not like themselves, meaning the people they left the city to escape, meaning the poor and black for the most part.

It is quite clear from the start of th

Indeed, the reaction of the parents to Cecilia's first suicide attempt was to throw a party to get her out of her funk and to bring her friends to the house to help change her attitude. During the party, she jumps out a window and dies. Many believe the reason for her suicide was a lack of religious faith, but other explanations are offered as well, none really perceptive.

The loss of innocence is complete by the last chapter as the boys huddle in their beds, able to recognize the ambulance attendants by the sounds they hear: "We knew them now" (Eugenides 217). The discovery of the suicides of the rest of the sisters ha shaken them and exposed them to aspects of life they fear and do not understand: "Already we knew the rest--though we would never be sure about the sequence of events. We argue about it still" (Eugenides 216). The efforts of the adult world to explain what happens are no more effective, with some newspapers speculating about a suicide part, with Dr. Hornicker now deciding that a chemical imbalance in all the girls might explain the events. The failure of the adult world to explain leaves the boys in a state of uncertainty that is in itself proof of lost innocence, referring to the nes media by saying, "Like us, they become custodians of the girls' lives, and had they completed the job to our satisfaction, we might never have been forced to wander endlessly down the paths of hypothesis and memory" (Eugenides 223).

The Lisbon home is filled with secrets. The Lisbons themselves are secretive about their lives and barely acknowledge the efforts of their neighbors to help after Cecilia's suicide. Lux has secrets from her parents, and indeed communication of any value between the generations is almost completely absent in this household and in the entire community. The theme of lost innocence is often expressed in terms of failing to understand what is happening, showing that an awareness of the fact that much about life is incomprehensible is part of the process. The adults are too often certain about their analyses of the issues, as when Dr. Hornicker writes, "Despite the severity of her wounds . . . I do not think the patient

Some common words found in the essay are:
Soon Cecilia, Obviously Doctor, Middle American, Dr Hornicker, Jeffrey Eugenides, lost innocence, novel set, cecilia's suicide, escape life, adult world, , adult world explain, girls family, period life, loss innocence, dr hornicker, world explain,

Approximate Word count = 1462
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels