VIRGIN SUICIDES POST 3

"The window shades had closed like eyelids and the shaggy flower beds made the house look abandoned. In the window where one light had burned, however, the shade rippled. A hand peeled it back, revewaling a hot yellow slice of face--Bonnie, Mary, Therese or even Lux--looking down the street. Parkie Denton hooted his horn, a short hopeful blast, but just as the girl put her palm to the glass, the light went out."

The author uses symbolism in describing the return of the girls to the house, the sort of final hurrah before their final, impending incarceration. The "window shades...closed like eyelids" are symbolic of a true shutting in and putting to sleep of their social lives. The "shaggy flower beds" represent neglect of their "flowery youth" which will now forever be set aside and wasted out of their mothers contempt. The hand moving the shade represents their last reach at civilization, and the yellow light and "slice of face" is all the hope that is left in both the girls and the boys who so longingly sought after them. The fact that the face could have been any of them adds to the interchangeableness of what they represent; although their personalities are different, they are all in search of womanhood and freedom that they will never achieve.

VIRGIN SUICIDES POST 2

"Together we watched Mrs. Lisbon push open her car door with one goot, then climb out, holding her purse over her head to keep dry. Crouching and frowning, she opened the rear door. Rain fell. Mrs. Lisbon's hair fell into her face. At last Cecilia's smal head came into view, hazy in the rain, swimming up with odd thrusting movements because of the double slings that impeded her arms. It took her a while to get up enough steam to roll to her feet. When she finally tumbled out she lifted both slings like canvas wings and Mrs. Lisbon took hold of her left ledbow and hed her into the house. By that time the rain had found total release and we couldn't see across the street"

The author uses a dreary setting and a metaphor to set up the return home of Cecilia. Usually when someone comes home from a hospital it is a good thing; in this case, it is quite the opposite. The darkness, "rain" and "haze" set up her return as dreary. Her attempt at getting out of the car is oddly reminiscent of a baby bird leaving its nest. The diction helps solidfy this comparison: "she lifted both slings like canvas wings". This makes it sound like a small bird getting ready to take flight. When Mrs. Lisbon grabs her elbow, it shows an over-protective mother bird restraining her able-bodied, eager youth from taking flight. With the addition of her movements being described as "odd thrusting", the scene takes on a slightly violent undertone. The significance of the dreariness is that coming home from her suicide attempt is even worse than death for Cecilia. She is now restrained even further, both by her canvas slings and by her overbearing mother. Dying would have let her "take flight" away from her miserable life; now, she is stuck at home in restraining casts with her mother acting as an extra boundary from what would have been happiness to the little girl and her old, worn-out soul

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES POST 1

"We've tried to arrange the photographs chronologically, though the passage of so many years has made it difficult. A few are fuzzy but revealing nonetheless. Exhibit #1 shows the Lisbon house shortly before Cecilia's suicide attempt. It was taken by a real estate agent, Ms. Carmina D'Angelo, whom Mr. Lisbon has hired to sell the house his large family had long outgrown. As the snapshot shows, the slate roof had not yet begun to shed its shingles, the porch was still visible above the bushes, and the windows were not yet held together with strips of masking tape. A comfortable suburban home. The upper-right second -story window contains a blur that Mrs. Lisbon identified as Mary Lisbon. "she used to tease her hair because she thought it was limp," she said years later, recalling how her daughter had looked for her brief time on earth. In the photograph Mary is caught in the act of blow-drying her hair. Her head appears to be on fire but that is only a trick of the light. It was June 13, eighty-three degrees out, under sunny skies."

This passage contains foreshadowing and a seemingly average and pristine setting that acts as a biting contradiction to what the reader already knows. The photograph is described as depicting a "comfortable suburban house", but the proceeding diction creates dark images of what this house eventually became. Visibly pleasing aspects of a common home such as "slate roof", "shingles", "windows" and "porch" seem to be part of a common appearance, but the "strips of masking tape" and overgrown "bushes" proceed to cover them, showing signs of neglect and careless delapidation. The author uses harsh alliteration to further make the scene dismal: "slate roof" "shed its shingles". As this picture of normalcy was taken just before the first suicide attempt, it gives insight to the not-so-obvious troubles underneath the seemingly normal appearance of the household. The visible image of Mary in the window where "her head appears to be on fire" is possible foreshadowing of her death, and perhaps even the way in which she will die.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE POST 7

"'You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321. Never again will you have the desire to commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against the State's Peace. I hope you take all that in. I hope you are absolutely clear in your own mind about that.' I said:
'Oh, it will be nice to be good, sir.' But I had a real horrorshow smeck at that inside, bothers. He said:
'It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed on him? Deep hard questions, little 6655321. But all i was to say to you now is this: if at any time in the future you look back to these times and remember me, the lowest and and humblest of all God's servitors, do no, I pray, think evil of me in your hear, thinking me in any way involved in what is now about to happen to you. And now, talking of praying, I realize sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. "

This quote utilizes dramatic irony and foreshadowing to emphasize a point the character, the prison chaplain, is trying to verbalize to a stubborn and self-satisfied Alex. A man of God, he questions his creators will over and over again in regards to the procedure Alex will go under that will rid him of his cruel ways, but also of his free will. When Alex snarks at this in his own head, it shows that he is not ready to endure nor understand the seriousness of what he is about to be deprived of. The Chaplain, on the other hand, repeartedly warns him and begs for Alex, a criminal, to forgive him. This should serve as a warning for Alex, but instead gives him a feeling of surperiority for considering it nonsense-this shows he has not changed, nor has he been "put in his place" as prison had originally been intended for. When the true purpose of the treatment is revealed, it it clear Alex jumped the gun and underestimated societies ability to supress him.

CLOCKWORK ORANGE POST 6

"They dragged me into this very bright-lit white-washed cantora, and it had a strong von that was a mixture of like sick and lavatories and beery rots and disinfectant, all coming from the barry places near by. Your could hear some of the plennies in their cells cursing and singing and I fancied I could slooshy one belting out:
'And i will go back to my darling, my darling,
When you, my darling, are gone.'
But there were the golosses of millicents telling them to shut it and you could evens looshy the avook of like somebody being tolchocked real horrowshow and going owwwwwwwww, and it was like the goloss of a drunken starry ptitsa, not a man. With me in this cantora were four millicents, all have a good loud peet of chai, a big pot of it being on the table and they sucking and belching away over the dirty bolshy mugs. They didn't offer me any. All they gave me, my brothes, was a crappy starry mirror to look into, and indeed i was not your handsome young Narrator any longer but a real strack of a sight, my rot swollen and my glazzies all red and my nose bumped a bit also.


This quote uses diction and imagery to set up a scene that is symbolic of Alex's loss of power after he is taken in by the police after his arrest. The jail is a dingy, dirty, pungent-smelling place; "lavatories", "beery rot" and "disinfectant" are combined to render what the smell of the building is like. Prisoners scream and sing from their cells, one in particular crying out like a woman; this could foreshadow the effects that jail will have on Alex, perhaps causing him to become less of a devious alphamale. The others in the room with Alex do not accept him and invite him to drink with them--they only offer him a "crapy starry" mirror. This is shocking for Alex, as he is used to being the ringleader of his friends, not being incarcerated in a place where he is intimidated and cannot take control. When he looks in the crappy mirror he recieves, he realizes that his face is swollen and beaten, different than his usual handsome ways. With lack of leadership, power, and his vanity, he is truly metaphorically incarcerated with no resources to act like his usual dominant self.