There's a lot of death to deal with in The Virgin Suicides. In fact, even though there are only five sisters, there are seven suicide attempts in the novel—the girls aren't always successful on their first try. In the novel, suicide is a mystery. It's inexplicable to the narrators and just about everyone else why the teenaged Lisbon sisters would all decide to kill themselves. Understanding all these deaths is the narrators' obsession; they comb through the details of the sisters' lives in an attempt to explain their deaths. These deaths aren't in the typical progression of things, "death is a part of life" and all that. It's a shocking and unnatural thing.
Questions About Mortality
- Who do you think decides that the remaining sisters should kill themselves?
- Was Cecilia's wish for death different from her sisters'?
- What do you make of all the references to the short-lived fish flies?
- How does the revelation of the deaths early in the novel affect your feelings about them?
Chew on This
Death is presented as an unnatural, unwanted event in the novel.
Death is a relief in the novel—a release from the horrible lives that the girls envision will be their inescapable fates.