Previous
Tone
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Cecilia's Diary:
Throughout the novel, the neighborhood boys serve as unreliable narrators, who interpret the events of the novel through their own sometimes limited or biased perspective. Though they are obsessed with the Lisbon sisters, they do not necessarily understand them well, which perhaps contributes to their enduring fixation. The unreliability of their narration is underscored in a passage in which, reading Cecilia's diary, they realize they were wrong to believe that she attempted suicide out of heartbreak for Dominic Palazzolo, another student at their school:
We didn’t understand why Cecilia had killed herself the first time and we understood even less when she did it twice. Her diary, which the police inspected as part of the customary investigation, didn’t confirm the supposition of unrequited love. Dominic Palazzolo was mentioned only once in that tiny rice-paper journal illuminated with colored Magic Markers [...] Cecilia had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, Candyland ladders and striped shamrocks, but the entry about Dominic read, “Palazzolo jumped off the roof today over that rich bitch, Porter. How stupid can you be?”
After her first of two suicide attempts, the latter of which is results in her death, many people assume that Cecilia was motivated by love for Dominic Palazzolo, an Italian student who jumped off his the roof of his home in an apparent suicide attempt. Just as Dominic's attempt was motivated by his frustrated love for Diana Porter, another student at school, so too, many assume, was Cecilia inspired by her love for Dominic. In Cecilia's diary, however, the boys find little evidence to support this claim. In fact, her only reference to Dominic mocks his actions, suggesting that she neither loves Dominic nor felt inspired by his act. Here, the boys confront their own inability to truly understand the thoughts and feelings of the Lisbon sisters, despite (or perhaps even because of) their obsessive devotion.
Related Themes:
