The Virgin Suicides

by

Jeffrey Eugenides

Mr. Hedlie is an English teacher at the local high school, but he works odd jobs in the summers. Outside of school, he is—by all accounts—a hippie. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon hire him to fix up and clean out their house after their daughters (except for Mary) die. The neighborhood boys watch from afar as he dismantles everything that used to belong to the Lisbon sisters.

Mr. Hedlie Quotes in The Virgin Suicides

The The Virgin Suicides quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Hedlie or refer to Mr. Hedlie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

Mr. Hedlie mentioned that fin-de-siècle Vienna witnessed a similar outbreak of suicides on the part of the young, and put the whole thing down to the misfortune of living in a dying empire. It had to do with the way the mail wasn’t delivered on time, and how potholes never got fixed, or the thievery at City Hall, or the race riots, or the 801 fires set around the city on Devil’s night. The Lisbon girls became a symbol of what was wrong with the country, the pain it inflicted on even its most innocent citizens, and in order to make things better a parents’ group donated a bench in the girls’ memory to our school.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Mr. Hedlie
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Virgin Suicides PDF

Mr. Hedlie Quotes in The Virgin Suicides

The The Virgin Suicides quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Hedlie or refer to Mr. Hedlie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Obsession, Gossip, and Scandal Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

Mr. Hedlie mentioned that fin-de-siècle Vienna witnessed a similar outbreak of suicides on the part of the young, and put the whole thing down to the misfortune of living in a dying empire. It had to do with the way the mail wasn’t delivered on time, and how potholes never got fixed, or the thievery at City Hall, or the race riots, or the 801 fires set around the city on Devil’s night. The Lisbon girls became a symbol of what was wrong with the country, the pain it inflicted on even its most innocent citizens, and in order to make things better a parents’ group donated a bench in the girls’ memory to our school.

Related Characters: The Neighborhood Boys (speaker), Mr. Hedlie
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis: