Nature In The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, tells the story of adolescent boys gazing at the five Lisbon sisters, who captivate the entire neighborhood with their blond hair, youthful beauty and mysterious character. It is clear that life is unbearably painful for the Lisbon sisters and leads them to their tragic deaths. Much of the sisters suffering can be directly correlated to elements of nature that are woven throughout the novel. This important connection is seen in the examples of nature reflecting life which gives insight into the girls. In The Virgin Suicides nature is used to represent the feelings of the Lisbon girl's that comes from being part of their oppressive society, family and their ultimate need to escape.
In attempting to save
The fish flies appearance throughout the novel generally signifies a coming death. The first appearance is when Cecilia first attempts to kill herself, “that was in June, fish-fly season, when each year our town is covered by the flotsam of those ephemeral insects. Rising in clouds from the algae in the polluted lake, they blacken windows, coat cars and streetlamps….always in the same brown ubiquity of flying scum” (3). Just as Cecilia's suicide spreads a dark blanket of sadness over the town and is considered repugnant, the fish flies settle on everything, making the neighborhood ugly/untouchable. These insects embody how the Lisbon girls feel about their lives and what happens to them in the future, "they only live twenty-four hours. They hatch, they reproduce, and then they croak. They don't even get to eat" (3). Cecilia and her tragically short life is a semblance of the fish flies, and her actions directly illustrate her escapism from her community. Not only are the fish flies representative of the girls, but also the way their community viewed them. The community cannot bear this burden of the fish flies actually mirroring the omnipresence of the Lisbon girls (Cecilia's death), “we tried to light them, but they wouldn't burn...we hit bushes, beat rugs, turned on windshield wipers full blast. Fish flies clogged sewer grates so that we had to stuff them down with sticks” (52-53). Because the community cannot erase what happened to Cecilia and its effect on the neighborhood they try to focus their attention on something they can control and get rid of as a means of ignoring the girls death. The girls in a sense are the fish flies and the community tries to ‘stuff them down” and ‘beat rugs’ to clear the constant burden of them which they carry. They exhibit the need