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
Mary ends up surviving—for now, at least. Later, the boys read the coroner’s report, learning that even the seasoned mortician became emotional when opening up the sisters’ bodies because they looked so young and healthy. “Seventeen years in this business and I’m a basket case,” he wrote in the margins of the report. Eventually, the boys realize—because of a sensational article by Linda Perle pointing out the connection—that the suicides took place on the anniversary of Cecilia’s first attempt.
Articles like the one Linda Perle publishes about the anniversary of Cecilia’s first suicide attempt is most likely why many people in the community hatch the theory that the sisters planned the whole thing from the very beginning. But several details contradict this hypothesis, like the fact that Therese ordered college brochures or Father Moody’s certainty that the four remaining Lisbon girls were distraught after Cecilia’s death (suggesting that they hadn’t seen it coming). In the end, though, nobody knows why the sisters did what they did—except, of course, Mary, who is the sole remaining Lisbon girl.
Themes
Finally, the footage of the Lisbon house that local stations shot earlier in the year airs, since the sisters’ deaths have sparked so much interest in the public. But none of the news coverage about the events seems sufficient to the boys, who yearn for answers and sound explanations. The theories that newscasters set forth are weak and unhelpful, leaving the neighborhood boys to keep grasping for their own hypotheses, feeling like they’ve been condemned to continuously “wander” their own memories.
Again, the boys are tormented by the overwhelming sense of uncertainty surrounding the situation with the Lisbon sisters. While the media sets forth simplistic answers, the boys yearn for a more nuanced understanding of what happened—an understanding they’ll likely never reach, which is why they feel sentenced to “wander” their memories of the Lisbon girls for the rest of their lives.
Themes
Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon, for their part, drop any pretense of normalcy. Mrs. Lisbon stops going to church, and neither of them answer the door when people go to check on them. They decide to sell the house, understanding they’ll probably have to take a loss because of its poor condition—but they don’t care. Mr. Lisbon hires the local English teacher, Mr. Hedlie, a hippie who in the summers makes extra money by doing odd jobs. As Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon go with Mary to stay in a motel, the English teacher diligently fixes up the house, cleans it, and—most notably, for the neighborhood boys, at least—throws out many of the Lisbon girls’ belongings. He then holds an estate sale of items the Lisbons no longer want, and the entire neighborhood comes to rifle through the wares and wander through the Lisbon household.
The estate sale is, in many ways, a literal representation of what the neighbors have been doing for the entire novel—namely, sorting through the Lisbon family’s private life in search of tidbits that might interest them. In this moment, the neighbors trade gossip and speculation for a different kind of insight into the Lisbon family’s life, sorting through their belongings as if they’re pilfering items from an exhibit in a museum.
Themes
The boys watch how the people around them behave in the aftermath of the suicides. Their parents seem better able than they are to simply forget about it and move on, quickly returning to their recreational activities. Still, everyone has their own theory about what happened. For Mr. Hedlie who cleaned out the Lisbon house, this theory has to do with the harsh realities of living in a “dying empire.” The tragedy, the boys piece together from Mr. Hedlie’s theory, is somehow related to everything in their suburban neighborhood—and the country at large—that doesn’t quite function correctly: the mail arriving late, the unfixed potholes, the “thievery at City Hall.” Everyone in town seems to feel this way, as if the Lisbon girls represent everything wrong with contemporary American life.
At this point, the Lisbon sisters’ suicides take on a much greater significance, as people in the community begin to associate the tragedy with much broader issues. More specifically, the townspeople come to see the suicides as a symbolic manifestation of the sense of decline besieging American life—or, to put it more accurately, the sense of decline that white, upper-middle-class Americans living in protected suburban neighborhoods are beginning to detect. The fact that such a strange and inexplicable tragedy can take place in a wealthy suburb undermines the idea that living the quintessential American dream of prosperity will protect people from hardship. Therefore, the Lisbon suicides pose an existential threat to the very fabric of suburban life, which is why so many of the adults in the boys’ neighborhood associate the tragedy with the decline of simpler times—times in which it was possible for them to believe in the mythical prosperity of American suburbia.
Themes
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A group of parents has a bench made in the Lisbon girls’ honor. The bench has a little plaque dedicating it to the Lisbon girls, calling them “daughters of this community” and completely overlooking the fact that Mary is still alive. Mary, for her part, comes home from the hospital after staying there for two weeks. While there, she met with Dr. Hornicker, who assessed her and thought that, given the circumstances, she was doing pretty well by the time she got out of the hospital. She comes home to an empty house and spends most of her time in a sleeping bag on the floor of her room.
The plaque on the bench illustrates the surrounding community’s lack of true compassion for the Lisbon family. Everyone, it seems, is more concerned with performative displays of empathy than they are with actually supporting the family. This is why they don’t even consider the fact that Mary is still alive. They don’t, in reality, care all that much about the details of the tragedy—they just want to make it looks like they’re doing the right thing.
Themes
The neighborhood plunges into deep summer, with parents focusing on the sort of things that normally preoccupy them—like, for instance, debutante parties for their teenaged daughters. One night, the neighborhood boys go to a debutante party with the strange but insensitive theme of “asphyxiation.” Attendees wear gasmasks, helmets, and even a deep-sea diving suit. Everyone at the party gets drunk and has a fantastic time. Teenagers horseplay on the host’s docks, making full use of the lakefront property. One boy falls in and, after being rescued, jokes about how he shouldn’t have been saved: “Good-bye, cruel world!” he shouts. An adult shushes him, worrying the Lisbons will hear.
There’s a stark contrast between the somber aftermath of the Lisbon girls’ group suicide and the joyous, frivolous spirit of summer in a wealthy suburban neighborhood. Even the boys—who are so wrapped up in the Lisbon drama—seem to forget some of the heaviness of recent weeks, perhaps because this is the example that has been set by adults in the neighborhood. These adults aren’t lingering on the tragedy. In fact, it’s almost as if they’ve forgotten about it already, considering that one of the neighbors chooses “asphyxiation” as a party theme—an insensitive theme, given that Bonnie died by hanging herself and Mary (who is still alive and most likely knows about the party) tried to asphyxiate herself in the oven.
Themes
The boys and the other partygoers don’t leave until dawn. As the sun comes up, the boys stumble across the lawn, having spent the night kissing girls and getting drunk. They feel mature, as if they’ve somehow already lived their adult lives—they’ve already, they feel, “been married and divorced, in a sense.” Walking down the street, though, they stop before the Lisbon house. The paramedics are there again, carting away the last Lisbon daughter. Mary, the boys learn, died in her sleeping bag after swallowing a large quantity of pills. There’s no fanfare this time, though—only the boys are there to watch the ambulance drive away.
When the boys feel that they’ve already “been married and divorced, in a sense,” they embody a certain battle-worn maturity, as if going to a party, drinking, and kissing girls all night has catapulted them into adulthood. They possibly feel this way because the party is the first time they’ve really cut loose—and focused on other girls—since the Lisbon tragedy, so it marks the first time the boys have had to move past unresolved hardship (a task that is arguably a big part of adulthood). And yet, just when they’re on the cusp of pushing forward in life, Mary’s suicide pulls them right back to the trauma of having witnessed the sisters’ deaths. It’s as if the timing of this situation prevents the boys from ever moving on.
Themes
After Mary’s death, the boys try to move on. It’s hard, though—they keep dreaming of the Lisbon girls. They watch Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon return from the cemetery and enter the empty house. The boys think the bereft parents will be leaving soon, since there’s nothing left for them to do there. The house, after all, has already been sold to a young couple. But they don’t come outside all day. It isn’t until midnight that they leave the house for the last time. Only Uncle Tucker sees them drive away.
Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon leave the neighborhood with little fanfare, slinking away in the night. Their unceremonious departure is perhaps intentional—a way of finally escaping the gawking neighbors and all of their morbid gossip.
Themes
Soon, the young couple moves into the Lisbon house and drastically changes its appearance. The Parks Department also returns and finally cuts down Cecilia’s elm tree, along with all of the other elm trees in the neighborhood. Without the trees, the entire neighborhood suddenly feels depressingly boring, as the boys now realize the houses are laid out on an uninspiring grid and that none of them—despite their external stylings—are all that different from each other.
The death of the Lisbon sisters coincides with a harsh reality check. As the superficial aspects of the neighborhood are stripped away, the boys realize that their beloved street isn’t the special, magical place they once thought it was. It’s just a regular suburban block. This realization is wrapped up in the Lisbon tragedy, as the boys come to realize that life can be quite harsh and that the idyllic American dream they were supposedly living in a wealthy suburb has never, in reality, protected or insulated them from hardship and sorrow.
Themes
Around this time, Sammy “The Shark” Baldino is arrested. Without the looming presence of his father, Paul Baldino no longer seems intimidating to the boys. He’s just a normal kid. The entire spirit of the neighborhood changes, as if its “demise” has coincided with the death of the Lisbon sisters. People stop talking about why the girls took their own lives and instead come to feel that the sisters were somehow prophetic, as if they didn’t want to be around for the deterioration of everything that once made the neighborhood—and, for that matter, the country—worth living in. There are no more beautiful elm trees, the booming automobile industry is waning, and even snowstorms fail to live up to their former glory. The Lisbon girls, then, decided to die simply because they refused to “accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.”
There’s a very clear connection between the Lisbon suicides and the broader cultural shifts taking place not just in the boys’ neighborhood but in the entire country. The Virgin Suicides is set—roughly—in the 1970s, a time in which countercultural movements and an economic recession changed the fabric of life in wealthy suburban communities that were accustomed to an easy, unexamined sort of prosperity. The boys feel this shift, but they also associate it with the Lisbon suicides, and even the surrounding community seems to imbue the girls with extra significance, as if their deaths are symbolic of the country’s trajectory.
Themes
In the many years since the Lisbon girls’ death, the neighborhood boys have grown up. But they haven’t stopped thinking about the Lisbons. They still have the 97 “artifacts” they collected to commemorate the sisters. The items are gathered in the old treehouse, which still stands in one of the only surviving trees in the neighborhood. But even the items themselves are perishing: the fabric of one of Lux’s bras going stiff, a pair of Cecilia’s canvas sneakers yellowing. These are the only puzzle pieces left to solve the question of why the Lisbon girls killed themselves, but the boys know they’ll never be able to piece it all together. The boys now understand that the suicides had nothing to do with them, but they still can’t help but linger in the past, feeling forever cut off from the girls they once tracked so closely.
The novel ends with an overall feeling of uncertainty—a feeling that is quite appropriate, since the boys will never know what led the Lisbon sisters to suicide. They can try to find meaning in the girls’ deaths, but any conclusions they reach will be their own subjective analyses of the situation, not objective truths about what happened; that kind of objectivity is and will forever be out of reach. And it is this sense of uncertainty that keeps the boys from fully moving on from the traumatic things they witnessed as adolescents, since the ambiguity surrounding the tragedy makes it all the more difficult for them to process what they beheld.
Themes
