How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
From our viewpoint, the Lisbons' sadness was beyond comprehension, and when we saw them in those last days, we were amazed at anything they did. How could they actually sit down to eat? Or come out to the back porch in the evening to enjoy the breeze? How could Mrs. Lisbon, as she did one afternoon, stagger outside, and across her uncut lawn, to pick one of Mrs. Bates's snapdragons? (5.19)
After their family tragedy, the Lisbons' neighbors consider them to be the walking dead. The fact they can do the simplest things in the world, like sitting down to dinner or wanting to pick a flower, seems impossible to the narrators. What makes people go on after something like that? Obviously, suicide runs in the family, but Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon somehow keep on living even if they're just going through the motions.
Quote #8
"I was outside, having a smoke. It was about two in the morning. I heard the door open across the street and then they came out. The mother looked bombed. The husband sort of helped her in. And then they drove away. Fast. Got the hell out." (5.33)
Uncle Tucker is the last person on the street to see the Lisbons. They leave under cover of darkness, like criminals. Their humiliation exacerbates the suffering caused by their daughters' deaths. They must feel like total failures, and the silence of their neighbors only increases their pain. Maybe Mrs. Lisbon took to drinking to make it through the nights.
Quote #9
They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us. We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm. And we had to smear our muzzles in their last traces, of mud marks on the floor, trunks kicked out from under them, we had to breathe forever the air of the rooms in which they killed themselves. (5.42)
The narrators' obsession with the Lisbon girls causes them intense suffering; every time they try to make sense of what happened, they have to relive those terrible moments. But they know that they'll never understand the depths of the sisters' pain.