We cannot know how another person feels. Perhaps, in an age of “empathy workshops,” this is a disappointment, but on a deeper level of human behavior it is probably both a relief and a tragedy. “Thank goodness,” some might say, “that we have no responsibility for the true experiences of others, that we don't have to be bothered, that it's not our problem.” These limits of consciousness are an essential and seemingly undiscussed component of the human experience that leads to all kinds of frustration and discontent. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides explores this unfortunate desire, and the idea of ​​"limits of consciousness" is a cornerstone of the novel's meaning. The Virgin Suicides is about five sisters who ultimately kill themselves. Except it's not. If this were true, the plot of the book would not be revealed in the first sentence (or title). The story tells of the death of the Lisbon sisters, but these girls are not the protagonists and the story is not theirs. Death is important in the story, but the death of the girls is not what is lamented. The death of a community, the death of a city, the death of a dream, and the death of a country loom over the pages of this book, making teen suicide seem unimportant. The story is really about a group of faceless, nameless, numberless neighborhood kids who spend their lives obsessed with the Lisbon sisters both before and long after their disappearance. But because of the limitations of consciousness, boys cannot understand girls or their situation until it is too late - and even then the deaths only prolong an adolescent obsession indefinitely. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay While the kids want to understand the Lisbons, the community ignores them. The few attempts to bring them closer after the death of the younger sister are superficial and ineffective. The miserable story is set in a middle-class suburb of Detroit in the 1970s, a decaying bubble containing a closed, gated community. This community is determined to preserve the middle class worldliness that it holds dear, yet it is in deep decay and it is the closed-mindedness of the community, the inability to even try to extend the limits of consciousness, this is the quality that rejects and it isolates a grieving family like that of the Lisbons, and contributes to the decay that permeates the book; a dying organism that tries to survive by collapsing on itself. Lisbon's sisters were dying, and a group of neighborhood boys couldn't figure it out until the girls' deaths became the boys' death sentence. The Lisbon sisters die and no one wants to know because they can't accept that they too are dying. The Virgin Suicides delves into the heart of American desperation and tells us about the dying who refuse to bury the dead. Although the book begins (and ends) with Mary's suicide, the second paragraph of the novel dives straight into Cecilia's first suicide attempt: the youngest Lisbon and the first to commit suicide. In the first readings, as one slips into the story, it is easy to forget who the book is really about - the boys - but a closer examination of this paragraph reveals less about Cecilia and more about the reactions of others towards her and therefore it is a microcosmic example. of the hidden plot of the story. “Cecilia, the youngest, who was only thirteen, had gone first, cutting her wrists like a stoic while bathing, and when they found her, afloat in her pink pool, with yellow eyes of a possessed person and the little body thatshe gave off the smell of a mature woman, the paramedics were so scared by her tranquility that they were mesmerized by her. But then Ms. Lisbon lunged in, screaming, and the reality of the room reasserted itself: blood on the bathroom mat; Mr. Lisbon's razor sank into the toilet, marbling the water." (1) The reaction of the paramedics is peculiar. It is the paramedic's job to save people in distress. They run around all day and see all kinds of strange and terrifying situations. They are trained to act immediately. What kind of paramedic gets “hypnotized” by something while at work? And why would anyone get “hypnotized” by the sight of a half-dead child? most of the book, they remain strangely transfixed by the Lisbons, still obsessed and longing for them when the girls are clearly mourning their family member and becoming increasingly isolated from their community and mother, the boys don't realize the truth of the situation until it's not too late, and even the paramedics must be brought into action with screams and blood. The situation must "reassert itself", this also makes no sense should be reaffirmed. The situation of four grieving sisters locked in a dilapidated house with a potentially abusive mother is not a situation that should be reaffirmed. be reaffirmed. In this first chapter, it quickly becomes clear to any reader that these boys are objectifying and projecting their own ideas and fantasies onto the girls of Lisbon, and because of this they are unable to understand them. Their observations are tinged with idealization and clearly concerning events are rendered unimportant. "...[Mrs. Lisbon] checked each daughter for signs of makeup before allowing her into the car, and it was not unusual for her to send Lux ​​back inside to wear a less skimpy top. None of us went to church , so we had plenty of time to look at them, the two parents deprived of color, like photographic negatives, and then the five daughters glittering in their homemade dresses, all lace and ruffles, overflowing with their fruitful flesh.” (6) Here, even in the first few pages, the boys observe an extremely controlling mother (whose forceful nature only gets worse as the novel progresses), but the boys are focused on how much they are able to watch them and “fruit the flesh." Their behavior at Cecelia's party is another example. After Cecelia unsuccessfully attempts suicide and Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon allow her to throw a party, she is clearly still ill. At the party, she is described as sitting sideways and staring into her punch glass, still wearing her old wedding dress, with bracelets attached over her suicide scars "...[acting] as if no one was there." (24) This image seems like the epitome of what a person looks like before committing suicide, which he does, in the middle of the party. The sentence that follows this description is "We knew to stay away from her." (24) Until Cecelia's leap, the boys only talk about their excitement for the other Lisbon sisters, and whether or not the sisters are the same ones they are in the boys' "bedroom fantasies" and spend the party trying to impress girls. making fun of "Joe the Retard". It is clear to the reader that everything about the party is wrong, and in fact throwing a party when a family member has just attempted suicide is strange. But the boys don't realize or even think about what the party might mean, when they receive their invitations all they can think about is how the girls had to think aboutThey. Boys are obsessed with girls, but their objectification and fantasy prevents them from even coming close to understanding them, let alone helping them. This is significant, because after Cecilia's death, while the boys remain obsessed with their sisters, the community isolates them. They act as if nothing is wrong. Cecilia's death is reported in municipal records as an accident. The ways in which the community attempts to achieve the goal do not fully recognize the situation and are completely ineffective. The boys think of nothing but the Lisbons, while the community tries to distract themselves from them, but in the end neither of them understands the Lisbons better than the other. This is why the examples of boys allowing their fantasies about girls to hinder their understanding of the situation are telling, because if anyone could have understood the Lisbons, it would have been these boys; they spent their adolescence obsessed with them. But they couldn't. These are the limits of consciousness. We will never understand each other. Whatever we do, something will get in the way. After Cecilia's death, the Lisbon house is filled with flowers. Everyone in the neighborhood sends them, along with condolence cards. Almost no one goes to see Lisbon. Some men and the priest, Father Moody, go, but end up talking to Mr. Lisbon about football. The flowers and cards are not true acknowledgments of the tragedy, as evidenced by the way the community puts effort into them, "[m]ost people opted for generic cards that said 'With Sympathy' or 'Our Condolences.' , but some [...] worked on personal responses. (45) Cards and flowers are customary, they send them because that's what they've always done when someone has died and they're motivated to send them for personal appearances - no one wants to do what hasn't always been done: if you've always written personal answers, so you have to. Cecilia's death creates a deep sense of urgency in the community: the urgency that nothing is urgent. Mrs. Lisbon seems to think so too: "[t]he girls did not miss a single day of class, and neither did Mr. Lisbon, who taught with his usual enthusiasm." The girls don't even get new school uniforms and have to keep wearing the old ones that don't fit. In describing the sisters at school, the narrators contradict themselves: "[t]heir recent shock was undetectable, but in sitting down they left an empty folding seat as if they were saving it for Cecilia." (61) There seems to be a determination to see the girls as withdrawn, or unaffected, so that there is an excuse not to reach out to them, not to understand. “Who knew what they were thinking or feeling? Lux kept giggling stupidly, Bonnie fingered the rosary in the pocket of her corduroy skirt, Mary wore clothes that made her look like the First Lady, Therese kept her goggles on in the hallways, but they walked away from us, from the other girls. , from their father…” (62-63) The girls looked the same as always, so obviously their emotional states were the same too. In the previous paragraph, Mary's former best friend Lisbon confesses that she ignored her after Cecilia's death because Mary "scared her out." No one makes any effort to talk to the girls. One of the boys, Mike Orriyo, tries to talk to Mary and fails because she doesn't know what to say. The girls are isolated, but they don't isolate themselves Lux is the only one who talks to many other students and, as one of her lovers says, "We weren't really talking, if you know what. I mean...". This urgency for everything to remain as it is, and trying to achieve this by ignoring and isolating a grieving family is once again linked to the limits of consciousness. The community values ​​its own preservation rather than helping and therefore, unlike of the boys,actively avoids overstepping boundaries or trying to understand what is happening to the nuns. They see a situation, and that it's difficult, and that connecting with someone whose sister died is challenging, so they give up. It “scares” them too much. However, behind the urge to do nothing lies the urge to do anything. There is a sense that the community wants to do something, but because they can't stand the change, their efforts only further isolate the family: the removal of the fence, the raking of leaves. the day of mourning. If we are limited, then why should we connect? We will do anything to make you feel better, as long as we don't have to understand why you are like this. It is clear that these limits of conscience - both that of the community and that of the children - contribute to the disappearance of the nuns of Lisbon. In the fourth chapter it is clear that the situation the girls find themselves in is disastrous. The house is literally shrouded in darkness by Mrs. Lisbon's sheer will and is completely dilapidated. Making love on Lux's roof is a cry for help, a performance. At the beginning of the novel, soon after Cecilia's death, the boys gather on Chase Buell's roof where they hear the sounds of Detroit. "Now that we were high up, sounds came to us that we usually couldn't hear, and crouching on the tarred tiles, with our chins resting on our hands, we could faintly make out an indecipherable tape played backwards of city life, shouts and shouts, the l 'barking of a chained dog, car horns, the voices of girls calling numbers in a dark tenacious game: sounds of the poor city we have never visited, all mixed and deaf, meaningless, carried by the wind of that place […] One after the other we all returned home.” (31) Perhaps, in this story, the roofs represent the truth. Above the decadent suburb, above the refusal to die, above everything, the truth of the world in which these characters live is easily seen: their city is in decline and many people of different races and classes live closer together than they would like to think to the city: they return home. And they're not worried about Lux at all: she's a goddess who teaches them how to have sex. It becomes clear that everything to do with the Lisbons secretes death. The girls are starving. The house is rotting. Family members begin to be described as if they were already dead, like zombies: Mary's obsession with makeup and "keeping up appearances" only exaggerates her decadence, Lux's ribcage protrudes, Mr. Lisbon goes to work with "fake smiles" and "no longer strengthens herself with a cup of coffee" and eventually resigns from school, Bonnie is "visibly wasting away", wears an apron made of chicken feathers and prays at the site of death by Cecilia. The house literally begins to invade the neighborhood with the smell of rotting flesh. No one will even touch the house anymore. No one will touch the house. No one has tried. People develop theories, but no one expresses the emotion and shock that the tragic sequence of events deserves, no one except old Mrs. Karafilis, who in just two words speaks for the reader and says the only true thing. of the entire book: "Goodness!" It also sums up what's wrong with the community: "What my yia-yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time." (169) It is pretending that things are okay, maintaining perfection, denial and the inability to understand due to the limitations of consciousness: this is what killed the girls of Lisbon. In the title and introduction of this essay,.