Jeffrey Eugenides

In the book Middlesex, author Jeffrey Eugenides writes about a Greek family that moves to America, and how the results of inter-family marriage affects their lives and future generations.Throughout the book, the author reflects today’s society by showing that people are forced to conform to certain roles, but can reinvent themselves if they feel that they no longer fit their assigned role. This is similar to society today because our culture is shifting to become more accepting of different…

quicker in order to replenish the supply of adults to lead the group. Today, many rituals for coming of age are based off our ancestors, however, they have lost their importance and become an empty process. Modern writers, like T.S. Eliot, Jeffery Eugenides, and William Maxwell, now talk of how this loss of ritual and thus the loss of a spiritual and physical connection to a higher power is leading to the decay of civilization and a rocky path to adulthood . Two writers in the late 19th century…

worships Olympia for her beauty, her muteness, and her lack of opinion. Eventually though, Nathanael realizes that Olympia is an automaton and has no substances because she is constructed merely to be the most perfect looking woman. Similarly, In Jeffrey Eugenides The Virgin Suicides, The Lisbon sisters are worshipped solely for their bodies prohibiting them from having outward, recognizable personalities and lending to the community idolizing and fetishizing them. The sisters are given their…

„The Virgin Suicides”, the debut novel of Greek-American author Jeffrey Eugenides, first published in 1993, is a retrospective relation of now middle-aged men, who investigate the story of five sisters, their teenage years’ obsession. The girls, aged from thirteen to seventeen, daughters of strict Catholic parents, were the boys’ neighbours in the suburbs in Michigan, until one summer of the 1970s, when one of them committed suicide and the rest followed their sister’s steps a year later. The…

a. Jeffrey Eugenides and Sylvia Plath both carefully create characters that exist to exhibit the lives of teenage girls, and their inherit suffering during adolescent. The lives of these teenage girls in The Virgin Suicides and The Bell Jar are shaped by mental illness and isolation, stemming from a withdrawal from society and any kind of community thereafter. The Lisbon Sisters and Esther Greenwood are more often than not, forced to interact with communities and families that prove to be…

The Virgin Suicides, written by Jeffrey Eugenides, tells the story of five mysterious suicides of the Lisbon sisters. The narrators, a group of boys from the neighborhood and school of the Lisbon sisters later chastise the girls for being selfish in their eyes, inviting them over for a getaway ride (and hopefully for the boys, debauchery) but distracting them long enough that the sisters could kill themselves, which speaks of selfishness itself. Additionally, Eugenides greatly mirrors the…

College. Whenever I hear that dreadful word I tense up and feel an impending sense of doom. The word college reminds me that soon I will become an adult. Soon I will move out and pay my own bills. Soon I will HAVE A JOB! I don’t think I will ever be ready. I like being a carefree teen whose only worry is to finish his English essay on time without making eighty grammar mistakes. Just thinking about college puts an invisible pressure on me, as if I was Atlas, but instead of holding up the world,…

When referring to the phrase “coming of age” most are automatically drawn to the realization that this is the transition a child experiences in their progression from child to adult. Varying in cultures the coming of age transition could really symbolize a significant moment in their life. This can be celebrated through ritual ceremony, legal convention or a simple conversation between peer and adult. Now, the coming of age is often a topic of fiction, usually in the form of a coming-of-age…

Characteristics of the MPDG? The 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' (MPDG) is a trope commonly found in modern literature and film. This stock character can be found in a wide variety of works, from that of classics such as Truman Capote to newcomers such as John Green. The term 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' was coined by Nathan Rabin, and was first used to describe Claire Colburn of the film “Elizabethtown". Rabin himself described the trope as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in…

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from various alternatives. However, it is crucial to note that the action that we choose might not correspond to the outcome that we desire as free will is solely pertinent to the course of action, not the result. Throughout the millennia, a significant number of philosophers postulated that the concept of free will is in the vicinity of moral responsibility which in turn…