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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Ms. Perl's Column:
In a passage that satirizes tabloid journalism, the neighborhood boys use a simile that compares the Lisbon sisters to “automatons” (or robots) when summarizing the attitudes of Miss Perle, a local reporter who is interested in the deaths of the Lisbon sisters:
The newspapers, later writing about what they termed a “suicide pact,” treated the girls as automatons, creatures so barely alive that their deaths came as little change. In the sweep of Ms. Perl’s accounts [...] the girls appear as indistinguishable characters marking black x’s on a calendar or holding hands in self-styled Black Masses. Suggestions of satanism, or some mild form of black magic, haunt Ms. Perl’s calculations. She made much of the record-burning incident, and often quoted rock lyrics that alluded to death or suicide.
The neighborhood boys, who have spent much of the novel attempting to understand the enigmatic Lisbon sisters, resent what they consider to be the poor reporting on the case by Ms. Perle, whom they feel has sacrificed accuracy for lurid details that will catch the attention of readers. Further, they claim that Ms. Perle thought of the girls “as automatons“ a simile that suggests that Ms. Perle has failed to take into account the individuality and liveliness of the girls as well as the clear sense of intention underlying their suicide pact.
In this passage, Eugenides also satirizes the type of sensational journalism represented by Ms. Perle, who reaches for clichéd and unconvincing explanations for the girls’ shocking act. In her report on the suicides, she suggests that the sisters were influenced by Satanism or rock music. In the 1970s and 1980s, tabloid journalists regularly reported sensational and exaggerated stories about teenagers joining Satanic cults while under the influence of rock music or heavy metal in order to drum up interest from anxious adult readers. Though Ms. Perle's understanding of the girls is superficial, the neighborhood boys also fail to come up with a convincing explanation for the suicides.
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