The Role Of Suicides In The Virgin Suicides

To be, or not to be, is Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy and arguable the most famous soliloquy ever written. The passage provides readers with an understanding of Hamlets personal fight with suicide. Here Hamlet weighs the positive and negative effects of committing suicide. Although Shakespeare inserted the passage to explain Hamlet’s thoughts it also has significance to the target audience of the Elizabethan/Jacobean Era. As through the passage Shakespeare discusses the controversial action of suicide. In the 17th Century society cared about the honour and respect of their family name. If one was to commit the sinful action of suicide they would be seen as dishonourable. Therefore suicide victims were not provided respectful burials and

Each year suicide is becoming more common in the United States among adolescents, according to the Suicide and Mental Health Association International. The main reason why adolescents commit suicide is because they are depressed. In the article "Nightmare in the Mirror" by Scott Long, he explains that adolescence has changed throughout the years. An assertion he makes is that teens have "Angst and bouts of suicidal despair distinguish this gloomy figure…" (Long 156). Long explains that throughout the years, adolescents have become sadder and depressed. Adolescents, who suffer from depression and are suicidal, don't usually inform others. Those adolescents fall into the third quadrant of the Johari Window.

Tracy, a seventh grade girl in the movie Thirteen, provides a glimpse into the dangers of negative adolescent development. She was an honor student who was content playing with Barbies, but she was also desperate for acceptance and affection. Tracy meets Evie, a popular girl who engages in destructive behavior. Tracy’s only goal becomes emulating Evie, and she embarks on a path of self-destruction. Tracy, who is in early adolescence, is at the peak of her most critical developmental stage (Capuzzi & Gross, 2014), and is willing to do whatever it takes to belong. Throughout the movie, we see her struggle with low self-esteem, anger, dysfunctional relationships, self-harm, and substance abuse. Vernon (2009), discusses Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which can be utilized with Tracy. Vernon (2009) notes that when needs of safety, belonging, love, and respect are not met, children respond emotionally, cognitively, physically, and socially, depending on their developmental level. The degree of development also impacts how children react to common developmental difficulties and situational problems. Vernon (2009) adds, “…how children interpret and respond to basic needs, as well as typical and situational problems, can result in various self-defeating behaviors” (p.3). Applying this to Tracy, we see that her basic needs of

Thus, he treats her like a child and “laughs at [her]… ” and calls her a “‘...little girl’” (Gilman 90, 94). For these two female characters in “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, their struggles are a direct result of male dominance, and their coping mechanism escorts them away from the world that devalues them.

Throughout history, our society has created gender norms that are followed consistently by members of communities. Though they differ from place to place, we recognize trends that seem almost prescribed to certain genders. Specifically, in the 1600s, men and women had explicit roles that were designated by people of stature. These expectations were followed loyally and people who failed to follow suit were shunned or sometimes even suffered seriously punishment including crude public beatings that were mot only pain inflicting but also status damaging (Rocke, Gender and Sexual Culture, 159). Looking deeper into the novel The Return of Martin Guerre, we identify from the start the expectations that are in place and how they play a role in the story. In comparison of Characters, taking into consideration the standard that had been set for men of this era, we notice that Pansette (Arnaud du Tilh) is an almost faultless example of what is expected for men and in contrast, Martin Guerre fails to meet these standards.

Roman suicide in the ancient culture of Rome is athe topic of iInterest. This interested me because it seems like a topic that wasn't very spoken of, in class. We start in ancient Rome this is a very common occurrence throughout the start of Rome's history itself. It is spoken of and many books that suicide was not frowned upon within the society, or of worshiped appraised. In this essay I'm going to bringing talk about the reason suicide occurred in the ancient city of Rome, or why it was not frowned upon in this Society, finally I'll talk about what was its main purpose at this time.

In the movie, The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, Costanzo, Halstead, Hanley & Coppola, 1999), the Lisbon sisters live in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan during the 1970’s with their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon. All 5 of the sisters, Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese, seem to suffer from depression and this causes great distress and impairment in their lives and inevitably leads to their suicides. According to the DSM-V (2013) the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder includes significant functional impairment accompanying 5 or more out of 9 specific symptoms that are present nearly every day. The sisters seen to exhibit at least 6 of these symptoms, therefore their behavior meets criteria for Major Depressive Disorder. First, the sisters all express a depressed/irritable mood most of the day, every day. We can directly observe this after the death of their sister Cecilia. They seem to be isolated and appear to be deeply sad. Second, the girls display little to no interest or pleasure in their everyday life. They seem to mope around and are constantly seen laying on the floor/ bed in their rooms not doing anything at all. Third, the sisters seem to have no appetite, this also

Does deviating from one’s gender norms inevitably doom one down a spiral of moral corruption? Tim O'Brien, author of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Ernest Hemingway, author of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, certainly seem to hold this view, as evident by the fates of the major female characters in their respective works. The deviance of the major female characters in both works appears to corrupt not only themselves, but also pollute their partners, causing them to suffer injury or harm as a result. The degree of injury ranges from negligible, like Fossie’s demotion and broken heart, to fatal, like the bullet that rips through Macomber’s skull. It begs the question, are these stories meant to serve as cautionary tales for their female readers, or possibly for their husbands, so they may recognize gender deviance and stop it in its tracks before their wives transform into Margot Macomber or Mary Anne Bell? This essay will analyze what such characters say about pervading views of women, both in society and in literature.

The women described in the Lais of Marie de France often commit traditionally sinful deeds, such as adultery, murder, and betrayal. However, with a few exceptions, the protagonists often end up living happily with their beloved for the rest of their lives. The Lais advocate for situational judgement rather than general condemnation of specific acts, which can be seen through Marie de France’s treatment of sinful heroines.

The poem “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” by Amiri Baraka uses vivid images of sights, sounds, and daily activities to symbolize a heartfelt story. In the poem, Amiri, is one of the African American slaves who is frustrated about the discriminatory treatment by whites. So frustrated he wants to commit suicide. The writer used transition words starting with “lately”, “now”, and “then” for each stanza. He was imagining how he acted before his death and how his daughter reacted to his death.

For this primary source paper, I decided to write a comparison on the source Women’s Place in Renaissance Italy: Alessandra, Letters from a Widow and Matriarch of a Great Family and The Virgin Suicides written by Jeffrey Eugenides. Immediately reading the first paragraph of Women’s Place in Renaissance Italy, it strongly resonated with The Virgin Suicides in a way. I thought these two would make an interesting comparison due to the way they both address men, death, complexity of being a female, and family.

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a novel that deals with the complexities of being a teenager, dealing with related themes such as growing up, loss of innocence, adolescent sexuality, loneliness, unrequited love. These seemingly innocent themes however, develop a darker side, as they lead to the suicides of the main characters- Lux, Bonnie, Celia, Mary and Therese: the 5 Lisbon sisters. The themes of objectification and The Male Gaze also become relevant through the nature of the detached male narrative; The story is told retrospectively through the the viewpoint of an unknown number of anonymous boys, now middle-aged men, who grew up in the same middle class suburban neighbourhood in middle America as the girls. This first person plural narrative, as well as various stylistic devices such as diction, imagery, metaphors and tone all affect the way the Lisbon sisters are represented to the reader.

It is my intention to compare the book, Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos, to its modern movie version, Cruel Intentions starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. I intend to examine how the original French text was modified in reference to plot, character, morals/values, and themes. I also plan to discuss how these transformations change the meaning of the story and reflect different cultural/historical contexts. There are some major differences between these two works, if only because of when they were written.

This reenforces the idea that the boys' sight is the main determining factor for much of the information they recount, as at they are unable to differentiate the Lisbons until the party, after having known the girls for much of their lives, and also lusting after them for almost as long as they have, they are isolated from the girls to such a degree that they are unable to see any difference in them until they are in the same room. Most of the community also associates all the girls with one another and rarely sees any distinguishable differences amongst them. In the section when Trip Fontaine and the other neighborhood boys take the Lisbon girls tot he homecoming dance, they boys realize they can't tell the girls apart. "Trip Fontaine, of course, had dibs on Lux, but the other three girls were up for grabs. Fortunately, their dresses and hairdos homogenized them. Once again, the boys weren't even sure which girl was which. Instead of asking, they did the only thing they could think of doing: they presented the corsages" (117). The boys' superficiality is highlighted; the only time in the novel in which the girls are allowed out of the house, they boys are still unable to determine one girl from another. Furthermore, the only way they determine who their dates are by simply lining up in front of them with flowers ready. When the remaining Lisbon girls commit suicide at the end of the novel, Mary is the only daughter to survive, and

With each letter in Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos advances a great many games of chess being played simultaneously. In each, the pieces—women of the eighteenth-century Parisian aristocracy—are tossed about mercilessly but with great precision on the part of the author. One is a pawn: a convent girl pulled out of a world of simplicity and offered as an entree to a public impossible to sate; another is a queen: a calculating monument to debauchery with fissures from a struggle with true love. By examining their similarities and differences, Laclos explores women’s constitutions in a world that promises ruin for even the most formidable among them. Presenting the reader glimpses of femininity from a young innocent’s daunting debut to a faithful woman’s conflicted quest for heavenly virtue to another’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance and earthly pleasures, he insinuates the harrowing journey undertaken by every girl as she is forced to make a name for herself as a woman amongst the tumult of a community that machinates at every turn her downfall at the hands of the opposite sex. In his careful presentation of the novel’s female characters, Laclos condemns this unrelenting subjugation of women by making clear that every woman’s fate in such a society is a definitive and resounding checkmate.