How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
After talking with Cecilia, Dr. Hornicker made the diagnosis that her suicide was an act of aggression inspired by the repression of adolescent libidinal urges. To each of three wildly different inkblots, she had responded, "A banana." She also saw "prison bars," "a swamp," "an Afro," and "the earth after an atomic bomb." When asked why she had tried to kill herself, she said only, "It was a mistake," and clammed up when Dr. Hornicker persisted. (1.34)
Adolescent libidinal urges? What the heck? Let's get out our old Freudian handbook and unpack this. Dr. Hornicker believes that Cecilia's teenaged sexual (libidinal) urges are being repressed and have to come out somehow. Thus, seeing the bananas (phallic symbol alert!) on the Rorschach (ink blot) cards. Dr. Hornicker believes it's her anger about the repression that causes her suicide attempt.
Quote #2
Even up close, the girls didn't look depressed. They settled into the seats, not minding the tight fit. Mary half sat in Kevin Head's lap. They began chattering immediately. As houses passed, they had something to say about the families in each one, which meant that they had been looking out as intensely as we had been looking in. […] They were, after all, our neighbors. (3.142)
Who would've thought that, up close, the girls seemed like totally normal teens? This passage makes the reader happy for them, but sad at the same time because we know what happened to them—and what could have been different.
Quote #3
Dr. Hornicker happened to be on call that night and managed to see Lux for a few minutes without Mrs. Lisbon's knowledge. "The girl was still waiting for the test results, so she was understandably tense," he said. "Still though, there was something else about her, an additional unease." Lux had gotten dressed and was sitting on the edge of the emergency room cot. When Dr. Hornicker introduced himself, she said, "You're the doctor who talked to my sister." (4.35)
When Dr. Hornicker finds out that Cecilia's older sister is in the hospital, he runs to talk to her. He's probably worried that she's not doing well after her little sister's suicide and wants to check her out. Cecilia must have told her sisters that she'd seen Dr. Hornicker after the doctors stitched up her wrists. With Cecilia dead, you can imagine that Lux feels a little uneasy about this particular psychiatrist.
Quote #4
"Ceci told us all about your tests. I'm just not in the mood right now."
"What kind of mood are you in?"
"No mood. I'm just kind of tired is all."
"Not getting enough sleep?"
"I sleep all the time." (4.41-45)
Again it's hard to read Lux's behavior. Is she suffering from mental distress or is she just being a moody teenager? She doesn't feel like talking to the doctor that tested her sister (and keep in mind that sister still killed herself), but can you really blame her? Her sleep habits are alarming though. Sleep disturbance, as Dr. Hornicker knows even if he's a fictional character, is a major symptom of serious depression. Not sleeping or sleeping all the time—both are danger signs.
Quote #5
"She was in deep denial," Dr. Hornicker told us later. "She was obviously not sleeping—a textbook symptom of depression—and was pretending that her problem, and by association her sister Cecilia's problem, was of no real consequence." Dr. Finch came in with the test results soon after that, and Lux jumped happily off the cot. "But even her delight had a manic quality to it. She bounced off the walls." (4.51)
Dr. Hornicker believes that Lux is denying her own pain over Cecilia's death, and he's decided that she's indeed depressed. His use of the term "manic" suggests he thinks Lux might have bipolar disorder. That makes sense when you think of her compulsive sexual behavior. Hypersexuality is sometimes a symptom of mania. Lux seems to feel that if she can minimize her own problems, then she can pretend she's coping okay with losing Cecilia.
Quote #6
Citing a recent study by Dr. Judith Weisberg that examined "the bereavement process of adolescents who have lost a sibling by suicide" (see List of Funded Studies), Dr. Hornicker gave an explanation for the Lisbon girls' erratic behavior—their withdrawal, their sudden fits of emotion or catatonia. The report maintained that as a result of Cecilia's suicide the surviving Lisbon girls suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (4.52)
The narrators sound like an academic article here, citing their sources in ways that would bring tears of admiration to your psychology professor's eyes. Dr. Hornicker uses psychological research to try to make sense of the Lisbon girls. It seems that their symptoms are not unique, but rather common in surviving siblings of suicides. The way the narrators present this information—clinical, unemotional—suggests they're not happy with this explanation. It doesn't do justice to the sisters' suffering.
Quote #7
Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair. Count the drunks in Russia or the suicides at Cornell. So many exam-takers threw themselves into the gorge of that hilly campus that the university declared a midwinter holiday to ease the tension (popularly known as "suicide day," the holiday popped up in a computer search we ran, along with "suicide ride" and "suicide-mobile"). (4.92)
The narrators are still searching for explanations; they've done some research and found out about an epidemic of suicides at Cornell in the 1970s, when a number of students jumped into a nearby gorge. Cornell didn't have any more suicides than other colleges; it's just that the deaths were very public. Those suicides were attributed to "the winter blues". However, the girls killed themselves in June, so what's up with this digression about Cornell? The boys are just reflecting that suicide isn't an uncommon cause of death for young adults. Even college students with plenty of freedoms commit suicides, they note. How much worse, then, for the Lisbon girls, shut up in their house.
Quote #8
After the suicide free-for-all, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon gave up the attempt to lead a normal life. Mrs. Lisbon stopped attending church, and when Father Moody went to the house to console her, no one answered the door. [. . .] During Mary's entire stay in the hospital, Mrs. Lisbon appeared only once. Herb Pitzenberger saw her come out onto the back porch with a stack of manuscript pages. Putting them into a pile, she lit them. We never learned what they were. (5.9)
While the girls are considered to be suffering from mental illness because of their suicides, we only catch a short glimpse of the toll their deaths take on their parents. It does seem that they lose their minds a little bit, isolating themselves and doing strange things. Mr. Lisbon's behavior at work deteriorates despite his best efforts to carry on.
Quote #9
They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; […] In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.
As the neighborhood declined, the neighbors began to see the girls not as crazy, but as almost clairvoyant, as if they'd foreseen the future and rationally opted out. This is a retrospective opinion, of course, and a pretty romanticized one. Can suicide ever be a rational choice?
Quote #10
"With most people," [Dr. Hornicker] said, "suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty." (5.41)
Dr. Hornicker sees a lot of reasons for the sisters' suicides. But whereas in Russian roulette a person has a 5-out-of-6 chance of survival, Dr. Hornicker's convinced that the Lisbon girls had a 0% chance. Too many things were wrong in their lives and their DNA.