Virgin Suicides 1

Passage:

Page 30
"Halfway up the staircase to the second floor her steps made no more noise, but it was only thirty seconds later that we heard the wet sound of her body falling onto the fence that ran alongside the house. First came the sound of wind, a rushing we decided later must have been caused by her wedding dress filling with air. This was brief. A human body falls fast. The main thing was just that: the fact of a person taking on completely physical properties, falling at the speed of a rock. It didn't matter if her brain continued to flash on the way down, or if she regretted what she'd done, or if she had time to focus on the fence spikes shooting toward her.....God' ".

-This passage is important to the book as a whole because it shows how the people around the sisters come to view these situations and death in general. Something that happened so quickly and horribly is viewed by the kids as something to discuss and analyze. It is also important because before we are able to understand any of the other sisters, the youngest has killed herself after already attempting to do so once before. It causes the reader to really wonder what the underlying conflicts will be for the other girls if Cecilia wanted so badly to end her life.

-The main device that shows through in this passage, but that is also apparent throughout the whole book, is the tone used by the author. The person narrating speaks so matter-of-factly about the horrific event of a 13 yr old throwing herself out of a window. It seems as if even though he is talking about something so gruesome and sad, it does not phase him. The author also juxtaposes the image of Cecilia on the fence next to the idea of listening to the beautiful music of an orchestra. This, when combined with the tone used, causes the reader to realize the truth of the situation while also creating an eerie mood. The ideas of death are talked about so frequently and often placed next to images of beauty, that it makes the reader realize how much these deaths come to infiltrate the life of this family and everything around them.