Which rabbit hole?

Agreeing with some of the previous blog posts, I think going down the rabbit hole implies fixation and obsession, yet it is not always willing. While the first step down the rabbit hole is voluntary, how much of the rest of the journey is? Wherever this rabbit hole leads, to self discovery, horror, confusion, I can't help but think that despite however scary it may become, one simply cannot stop. Whether it is the desire to know or the simply urge to continue until the end, going down the rabbit hole implies seeing it through.

In The Virgin Suicides, the narrators carried out an exploration not of their own consciousness, but of the Lisbon sisters. No matter how disgusting their fascination of the girls is depicted, the boys are lost going down the rabbit hole of the myth of the Lisbon sisters. As a reader, it seems clear their interest in the girls began out of curiosity and attraction before becoming wholly inappropriate. It was as if at some point they reached the point of no return; they were simply too invested, curious, and involved to ever realize the significance of what was happening. It is easy to say they could have stopped with their creepy exploration and gotten help for Lisbon sisters, as it is what they should've done, but from the view of the narrators, stopping their “investigation” seems not only impossible, but they would question the need to.

The boys narrating the novel claim to want to “learn” so much about the Lisbon sisters, but I'm interested in turning it around. I'm interested in finding out, what, if anything, did the boys themselves learn from their obsessive, inappropriate, and damaging exploration of the Lisbon sisters. The boys went down the rabbit hole into the lives of the Lisbon sisters, and I think they might've taken themselves too. Significant or traumatic events or episodes in peoples' lives often leads to self reflection and self discovery, and to the boys writing the novel it seems this story is both. Did the boys learn anything about themselves (either in the observing or telling of the story)? Are there remarks that give insight into the boys' minds (other than the fact they horribly objectify the Lisbon sisters)? I'd like to think the boys learned something about themselves in this whole process. But maybe I'm wrong and all that I discover simply reinforces the boys as objectifying, inappropriate, and misogynistic.


-Andrew Thvedt