Monday, September 23, 2013
The Lisbon Girls, as we kind of knew them
So, my favorite part in the reading was the ending and how there is really no clear answer as to why the girls killed themselves. The boys note that there suicide is: "simple selfishness" (242), yet they are unable to understand why they killed themselves. The last (and best line, in my opinion) is from the boys, and it says: "we loved [the Lisbon girls]" and "we will never find the pieces to put them back together" (243). It seems to me that the entire journey of the boys, including telling the story, leads them back to the painful conclusion that they only know so much. As badly as they want to, they can't tell the complete, truthful story themselves. Only the Lisbon girls can, but they've departed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
beautiful post, Jack. I agree with everything you said.
ReplyDeleteI think it's funny how the boys lead with this disappointing tone, but as so as they consider what the girls were thinking, "participat[ing] in their own madness" (243), their collective thought process shifts onto themselves. It's outrageously hypocritical that they describe the girls as becoming "too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind"; that last part is strange though, the combination of visionary and blind. Perhaps then is where they begin to falter. I must say, at first in this paragraph I was angry with the boys and their lack of understanding, even though they've been dissecting it; however, by then end, it didn't even turn to a sadness or an understanding, but a pity. When they complain, saying "they hadn't heard us calling" (243), I really couldn't believe it. I sorta reverted back to anger, but really, they have no idea what to do. No one does. They never did.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering what you all thought of the boys in this last, climatic paragraph