How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Cecilia, the youngest, only thirteen, had gone first, slitting her wrists like a Stoic while taking a bath, and when they found her, afloat in her pink pool, with the yellow eyes of someone possessed and her small body giving off the odor of a mature woman, the paramedics had been so frightened by her tranquility that they had stood mesmerized. (1.2)
Cecilia's youth is emphasized at the beginning of this sentence: "youngest," "only thirteen." However, that juvenile character contrasts with the way she seems after her suicide attempt: "mature," "tranquility." It is as though her suicide is her passage into adulthood—a shortcut.
Quote #2
There had never been a funeral in our town before, at least not during our lifetimes. [. . .] Nobody's grandfather had died, nobody's grandmother, nobody's parents, only a few dogs: Tom Burke's beagle, Muffin, who choked on Bazooka Joe bubble gum, and then that summer, a creature who in dog years was still a puppy—Cecilia Lisbon. (2.5)
The neighborhood leads a charmed existence; it's really Happy Valley. People just expect that everything will be fine, especially with their children. They just don't know what to do with a child who decided not to grow up. It's clearly a totally extraordinary experience for the narrators.
Quote #3
The truth was, even the wimpiest boys were more adept than Trip at asking girls out, because their sparrows' chests and knock-knees had taught them perseverance, whereas Trip had never even had to dial a girl's phone number. It was all new to him: the memorization of strategic speeches, the trial runs of possible conversations, the yogic deep breathing, all leading up to the blind, headlong dive into the staticky sea of telephone lines. (3.50)
Coming of age can be a struggle. You know what it's like—having to deal with your weird gawky body getting all out of whack on hormones and growth spurts. But check this out—those difficult moments really do build character. Someone like Trip Fontaine, who magically skips over the awkward stage, doesn't have practice dealing with awkward times.
Quote #4
"I'm here to tell you that my intentions toward your daughter are entirely honorable."
Mr. Lisbon's eyebrows rose, but his expression was used up, as though six or seven boys had made the same declaration that very morning.
"And what might those intentions be?"
Trip brought his boots together, "I want to ask Lux to Homecoming." (3.92-95)
Whether you realize it or not, lots of high school rituals are really just part of making sure everyone comes of age in a timely fashion. Dances, and the pain of asking for permission and for a date, are part of growing up. It's a public declaration of adulthood, and Trip handles this one like a champ.
Quote #5
In the background, Mrs. Lisbon said, "Why don't you let the boys pin them on?"
At that, the girls stepped forward, shyly presenting the fronts of their dresses. The boys fumbled with the corsages, taking them out of their cases and avoiding the decorative stickpins. They could sense Mrs. Lisbon watching them, and even though they were close enough to feel the Lisbon girls' breath and to smell the first perfume they had ever been allowed to wear, the boys tried not to stick the girls or even to touch them. (3.139-3.140)
This is a pretty touching scene. The girls really don't know what to do with the corsages, and for the first time we see their mother helping them along in this small coming-of-age ritual. They each step forward as though it were rehearsed, and the boys must show that they will treat their dates carefully even while doing something slightly dangerous, like pinning a flower to a dress.
Quote #6
Each of us had said he was sleeping over at a friend's house, so we had all night to sit and drink, unmolested by adults. (4.160)
The boys have to escape the adults in order to feel like adults. They drink and stay up all night, and also make radical decisions for themselves, attempting to rescue the girls and take them to Florida. But they are still kids under their parents' control, and they have to lie in order to get the freedom to carry out their plan.
Quote #7
Like everyone else, we went to Alice O'Connor's coming-out party to forget about the Lisbon girls. The black bartenders in red vests served us alcohol without asking for I.D., and in turn, around 3 A.M., we said nothing when we saw them loading leftover cases of whiskey into the trunk of a sagging Cadillac. (5.22)
A coming-out party is, for those of you who don't know, an event in which a usually affluent teenage girl is presented to society as an eligible young adult. Alice O'Connor isn't the only one being treated like a grown-up for the first time; the boys, too, are served alcohol. It's a sad irony that while Alice is coming out, Mary is going out for good. The novel's juxtaposition of these two events is pretty genius. You have to wonder: Did Mary know about the party? Was she invited? Could she see all the girls in their party dresses going to Alice's house while she was thinking about being dead?
Quote #8
Inside, we got to know girls who had never considered taking their own lives. We fed them drinks, danced with them until they became unsteady, and led them out to the screened-in veranda. They lost their high heels on the way, kissed us in the humid darkness, and then slipped away to throw up demurely in the outside bushes. Some of us held their heads as they vomited, then let them rinse their mouths with beer, after which we got back to kissing again. (5.22)
More aspects of coming of age: getting so drunk you puke. The girls and boys lose their inhibitions (and their lunches), which lets them act like adults on a sexual level. They're "unsteady" because they're new at this, but they get the hang of it pretty quick.
Quote #9
The girls were monstrous in their formal dresses, each built around a wire cage. Pounds of hair were secured atop their heads. Drunk, and kissing us, or passing out in chairs, they were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived—bound, in other words, for life. (5.22)
The coming-out party is the tipping point between adolescence and adulthood. Coming-of-age is presented as a less than desirable process: the girls are "monstrous" as teenagers, but their future as adult women sounds pretty awful, too. The stereotyped path to adulthood for these girls will lead to unhappiness, even if they don't realize it.
Quote #10
Someone fell in, was rescued, and laid on the pier. "I've had it," he said, laughing. "Good-bye, cruel world!" He tried to roll into the lake again, but his friends stopped him.
"You don't understand me," he said. "I'm a teenager. I've got problems!"
"Be quiet," a woman's voice scolded. "They'll hear you." (5.23-25)
The Lisbon girls' suicides are impossible to explain, but the closest thing we have to an explanation is Cecilia's declaration that being a thirteen-year-old girl is difficult. The thing that's hard for everyone to understand, then, is why all teenagers don't kill themselves. For this drunken boy, the trials of adolescence are a joke.