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Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—The Day of Grieving :
In a passage saturated with situational irony, Eugenides satirizes the attempts by high schools to address issues surrounding mental health through the "Day of Grieving" held at the Lisbon Sisters school following the death of Cecilia:
The Reverend Pike spoke of the Christian message of death and rebirth, working in a story of his own heartrending loss when his college football team failed to clinch the division title. Mr. Tonover [...] let his students cook peanut brittle over a Bunsen burner. Other classes, dividing into groups, played games [...]The Lisbon girls, stranded in separate homerooms, declined to play, or kept asking to be excused to go to the bathroom. None of the teachers insisted on their participating, with the result that all the healing was done by those of us without wounds.
The teachers at the school feel that they must try to do something to address mental health following Cecilia's suicide, which leaves her sisters in a state of social isolation at school. Though their intentions are good, Eugenides presents these efforts as clumsy and insufficient in a satirical fashion. The school reverend "spoke of the Christian message of death and rebirth" but speaks of a trivial matter—the loss of a football game—as an example of "heartrending loss." The chemistry teacher, finding no easy way to work the theme of grief in to a chemistry lesson, allows the students to "cook peanut brittle over a Bunsen burner," and other teachers allow their classes to play games, which the Lisbon sisters skip. Ironically, then, only those students who were not grieving experienced "healing" on the Day of Grief.
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