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Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Too Much Therapy :
In a passage marked with situational irony, the neighborhood boys conclude that the teenagers interviewed on local television for a show "focused on the subject of teenage suicide" had received "too much therapy to know the truth" of their own suicide attempts:
Television crews came by to film the increasingly dreary exterior of the Lisbon house, first Channel 2, then Channel 4, then finally Channel 7. We watched to see the Lisbon house on TV, but they didn’t use the footage until months later [...] Meanwhile, a local television show focused on the subject of teenage suicide, inviting two girls and one boy to explain their reasons for attempting it. We listened to them, but it was clear they’d received too much therapy to know the truth. Their answers sounded rehearsed, relying on concepts of self-esteem and other words clumsy on their tongues.
After Cecelia's death, most local reporters ignore the story, either out of respect of the family or because it hardly seems newsworthy. One local reporter, Ms. Perle, references Cecilia in a story about teenage suicide that the neighborhood boys regard as clumsy and ill-informed. Increasingly, the Lisbon family attracts the unwanted attention of local media as the news begins to cover the topic of teenage suicide. One local channel interviews a few teenagers who had previously attempted suicide, but the neighborhood boys feel that they have little insight. Ironically, they claim that these teenagers no longer understand their own motives because of the therapy they received, concluding that their answers "sounded rehearsed." The neighborhood boys, then, feel that the explanations offered by therapy cannot sufficiently account for the complexities of teenagers' actual feelings.
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