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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Virgin Suicides, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal
Coming of Age and Nostalgia
Suburban Life, Class, and Decline
Loss, Mourning, and Uncertainty
Summary
Analysis
The neighborhood boys are confounded by Cecilia’s suicide, unable to explain why she would want to die. Her diary—which the police took as part of their investigation—doesn’t provide much insight. The only thing she wrote about Dominic Palazzolo reads: “Palazzolo jumped off the roof today over that rich bitch, Porter. How stupid can you be?”
What bothers the neighborhood boys most about Cecilia’s suicide is the uncertainty surrounding it, ultimately suggesting that they—and most people—find unexplained tragedies especially troubling.
Themes
In the direct aftermath of Cecilia’s suicide, the boys file out of the house unsure of what to say. One of them breaks the silence by calling out, “Thank you for the party, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon.” Then they all go across the street and watch as the paramedics arrive. Other than the drama at the Lisbon house, the rest of the neighborhood continues like normal—the boys can smell someone barbecuing nearby, and they can hear people playing badminton in an adjoining backyard. As darkness falls, the boys watch as houselights go on and televisions glow through the windows. Then, gradually, the boys themselves go home.
The boys live in a neighborhood committed to keeping up appearances, which is perfectly exemplified by the fact that one of the boys thanks Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon for hosting a party—a dark yet comedic moment in which it’s overwhelmingly clear that the people in this community have no idea how to navigate tragedy. And yet, at the same time, it’s also the case that life continues like normal even in the face of calamity. Other than the Lisbons and the boys who witnessed Cecilia’s suicide, everyone in the neighborhood continues to go through the motions of everyday suburban life, which won’t grind to a halt because of a young girl’s death (even if the boys later associate the decline of this idyllic suburban life with the Lisbon girls’ suicides).
Themes
Most of the neighborhood boys’ parents attend Cecilia’s funeral, which doesn’t involve burying her body, since the cemetery workers are still on strike. The local parents leave their sons at home to protect them from “the contamination of tragedy.” Since the boys weren’t there, they have to rely on others for information about what the funeral was like. One woman swears she overheard Mrs. Lisbon comment on Cecilia’s nails after peering into her open casket at the service. “Couldn’t they do something about her nails?” Mrs. Lisbon allegedly asked, to which Mr. Lisbon supposedly replied, “They’ll grow out. Fingernails keep growing. She can’t bite them now, dear.”
The boys’ parents don’t let them go to Cecilia’s funeral as a way of protecting them from the tragedy. What they might not realize, though, is that it’s too late for that: the boys already witnessed the most gruesome part of Cecilia’s death. In a way, then, not letting them attend the funeral actually robs them of the chance to reach a sense of closure about what they saw. This, perhaps, is why they remain so fixated on not just Cecilia’s death but also the other Lisbon sisters’ suicides.
Themes
Eventually, the boys get hold of Cecilia’s diary. A boy working as a plumber’s assistant finds it in the Lisbon house in the bathroom off of Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon’s bedroom. There’s a lock on the diary, but it has already been forced open, suggesting that Cecilia’s parents have been perusing it in search of answers. Now, the boys make their own examinations, with Tim Winer (“the brain”) insisting on analyzing Cecilia’s handwriting. He concludes, from looking at the slant of her letters, that she suffered from “emotional instability” and that she was a “dreamer” who was totally “out of touch with reality.” Still, the boys continue to take Cecilia’s diary up to Chase Buell’s attic, where they read passages aloud—passages some of them still know by heart years later.
The boys’ obsession with Cecilia (and the Lisbon sisters in general) starts to really take shape in this section, as it goes from a somewhat normal—albeit exaggerated—fascination to something a bit more desperate. This desperation most likely has to do with the fact that they were there when Cecilia killed herself; they feel involved in the tragedy, and now they want to do whatever they can to find out why Cecilia decided to die by suicide, even if this means invading her personal privacy and stealing her diary from her grieving family.
Themes
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