Here are some started questions/ideas, some with partial/incomplete address regarding Virgin Suicides. I promise not to speak in anything but standard, contemporary English, though I would like to here the phrase "stone cold fox" used in some non-satiristic manner.
(1) This is our first time to discuss specifics types of narrators doing the narrating within the narrative (notice that these differences are more than semantic; they are consequential). IN the novel, there is a quite new type of narrator, one who is both present and not present: he is the narrator in the (plural???) first person, yet he doesn't seem to be a character in the story (he is never directly addressed. How might we begin to account for this?
(1a) Connected to above, we could talk as to how the filmic version handles the odd narration of the book. Can you make an argument about the challenges for and responses of the film to the novel's narrating?
(2) When texts use first-person narration (as the book does in a weird way), we might expect that voice to guide us through the story (to be sure), but we might also expect it to guide our responses to the story (i.e., to tell us how to feel or react to events). I will make the claim that the novel never does this. Defend or refute.
(3) We can also talk about the texts as being "about" nostalgia and memory every bit as much as they are stories of these girls. Take an intellectual leap and address this idea.
I have not finished reading Virgin Suicides as of yet but I am finding the narration interesting. The book seems more like the narrator is righting in a journal. His thought pattern isn't congruent as he travels back and forth through his past for details of the events that took place in his youth. The movie however seems to be more similar to a Michael Moore documentary. Although the audience can tell that the events have happened in the past they flow in more of a straight line with one thought at a time occurring. More thoughts to come. :)
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing the movie and reading the novel it seems to me that the narrator is not really writing in a journal but trying to connect the pieces. He labels evidence as "exhibit #" like a detective. At one point he even tells the reader not to touch one of the pieces of evidence. This would support the fact that the narrator like a detective is not involved in what he's investigating but really is just an outside vantage point. The narrator or group of narrators really only becomes a significant part of the story in the end after the girls are dead. The movie seems to operate in the same fashion because it acknowledges the group of boys who are watching and only every now and then become involved in the girls' lives...I got nothing on "stone cold fox."
ReplyDeleteThis story is definitely key to the nostalgic nature of the narrator(s) memory. For, we can admit that nostalgia is effervescent throughout the course in the sequence of events. The narrator even mentions that "they" recount the course of events repeatedly. It appears as if "they" are homesick for the feeling in their youths, before the suicides occurred. The suicides represent the offing of the narrator’s own innocence. Yes, the story is just as much about the girls, but only because the narrator is so infatuated. Everything revolves around the girls, even the weather. The way the leaves and trees mimic life course just makes perfect sense when comparing it to that of memory. When it comes to memory and an important event, other occurrences and objects just seem to mirror that important event. Or, "She was the still point of the turning world"-my favorite quote of the book so far.
ReplyDeleteTo me, I think that the narrator was one or all of a group of neighborhood boys. The voice of the narrator apparently appears as a boy, which exactly suit the description of those boys. It was obvious that the first-person narration was told by the character in the film. Even in novel, the use of "we" and "us" explained that the narration mode was the first person plural.
ReplyDeleteIf the narrator is not the character of the film and novel, the narration mode would be a third person omniscient such as the narrator of "Barry Lyndon"; however, that is not the case in the film and novel of "Virgin Suicide".
Not only the narrator know all the facts and describe what their action and behavior, he also reveal the thought process and feeling of the characters; therefore, the story was told by first person omniscient.
Even the narrator supposed to tell the reader the detail of the character and the story, but we are not necessary to let them guide us how to response, because the narration was only reflected the thought of the narrator, and since I believe that he was one of the boys in the story, the reader will highly affected by the thought process and perspective of the narrator.
The reader should see the whole story as a memory of the narrator, and the reader should response only to the story and the character, not the perspective of the narrator.
In the book, as in the film, there are multiple young men recounting their memories of tragic childhood events. It's interesting as the reader to never know exactly which of the boy's feelings or ideas are being presented because they refer collectively to themselves as "we". The events shaped their rites-of-passage to adulthood. They relate the tragedy of the suicides, their youthful point of view of sexuality related to the girls and their circle of friends, and the affect the deaths had on the entire community.
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a few details shared in the story, i.e., the background of the tunnel from the Baldino house, and how their friend Paul wound up discovering the body of Cecilia. Another example are the details of the young years of Trip. Trip calling Lux a "stone fox" was his revelation of her attractiveness, but acknowledgement that she did nothing to fuel his desire.
I definitely agree that the narrative in the novel (and to some extent, the film) is an attempt to connect the pieces of what led the Lisbon girls to suicide. It's almost like a patchwork quilt of memories and various accounts. The whole Hardy Boy clue collecting essence is lost on the film, methinks, because at certain instances we're looking through the cameras all-seeing objective view.
ReplyDeleteWith the novel, there is a window for speculation because the narrator is reconstructing events from testimonies and Exhibits #1-#98. This is absent in the film because of the finality and irrefutable authority of the camera lens. It shows, rather than tells.
I couldn't help but notice the parallels between various groups in the novel that were not so apparent in the film. The narrator(s) description of Cecilia's journal mimics the narrational format of the novel itself, in that Cecilia's perspective seems to waver between her own perceptions of the world and her place as a member of the Lisbon family. As the narrator notes, she refers to her sisters and herself as a single entity, much as the boys across the street speak to the reader. The film seemed to focus more on the content of the diary (not that the novel doesn't) but less on the idea of the Lisbon sisters as a single entity. The girls' homecoming dates also make significant use of the word "we" in their dialogue with the girls, exemplified in their lack of caring of which male was to be paired with which daughter. I feel this ambiguity and lack of individual characterizes the entire concept of suicide, in addition to being what fuels the narratorial group's after-the-fact desire to reflect on who the girls really were.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that the novel never really tells us exactly what to feel, but instead presents a detached perspective examining the events and documents preceding the suicides, and the various commentary that locals had to add to that. We cannot expect the novel to tell us what to feel, because most of the "evidence" is subjected to a character's opinion. For example, all of the details about Cecilia's funeral can only be assumed, as the narrators themselves admit that "most of us" didn't go, as is also the case with the car ride to the homecoming dance. The entire novel is a collection of differing interpretations of the events collected through opinionated interviews, and the only verifiable information is that which is physically present in the form of an Exhibit.
-Kyle King
Perhaps the novel itself isn't a personal journal but more of a crime seen journal as a lot are suggesting. It does however seem to be a close case to the writer of the "journal". It seems that he (the narrator) is studying a cold case from his past to figure out what really happened with the help of those that actually experiened it with him.
ReplyDeleteHowever it also had a Butterfly Effect feeling about it. Where he thinks about his past so deeply that it is like he is reliving the events, but this time as an out spirit.
I still feel that the movie has a Michael Moore documentary feeling. Perhaps it was the cut-away story that Tripp told about his night with Lux while he was in rehab.
The book seemed to be more of a collection of various memories arranged into a cohesive narrative. The information we are given in the book is possibly unreliable. The majority of the information is told from the point of (what probably are) middled aged men recounting their youth. Whenever we look to the past it is generally a highly romanticized version of it, and the narrators actually make note of this at one point. Our other sources of information include a recovering alcoholic (Trip), suburban gossipy mothers, a man who drank a case of beer everyday (Uncle Tucker), etc. Some of the accounts must be unreliable, as our only source of information came from Uncle Tucker after he had finished a case of beer. Memory is generally unreliable.
ReplyDeleteAs for the plurality of the narrator, the book did this in a way that was not possible in the film. In the film we seem to attach the voice of the narrator to one of the characters. In the book this is not possible because the narrator does not seem to interact in the stories of the past. Also, while the book shows how many of the events that took place in the Lisbon house were seen only through a window, the film gives the authority to the camera to 'let us in' the house as if we are watching real events transpire, rather then viewing a collective memory.
-Eric Bouthiller