Pure Melancholy vs. False Happiness: Reading The Virgin Suicides Saskia Rohde 12th Grade

In The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides has the narrators describe seemingly average daily occurrences as extraordinary, exhibiting the search for something more significant in their uniform, designed-to-be-perfect lives. Through the narrators’ overstatements, it is evident that the boys become increasingly obsessed with the minute details of the Lisbon girl’s lives until it becomes their top priority. Observing the Lisbons becomes their sole purpose in life, causing the boys to stop upholding the perfect suburban illusion many have tried so hard to uphold. They wistfully dedicate their entire lives to dwelling on the deceased girls, suggesting that the false satisfaction that originates from constructed perfection is in fact necessary for suburban happiness. While Eugenides displays the depressing confinement of perfect suburban life, the boys’ exaggerated descriptions ultimately demonstrate “freedom” as more detrimental; their inescapable infatuation caused by deviating from the standard lifestyle portrays their escape into melancholy as a worse fate than false happiness.

Eugenides has the boys describe average interactions with the Lisbon girls as incredible to display their desire to find something momentous in their...