Comparing The Narrator In The Virgin Suicides And Love Medicine

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The narrator, or sometimes narrators, plays a crucial role in telling the story that is presented on the pages of the novel. In Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, the young teenage boys in a small community experiences the loss of the Lisbons sisters’ – Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia – and investigates (and becomes obsessed with) the sisters’ suicides. In Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, the death of June Morrissey, a young Chippewa woman, causes the members of the Kashpaw and the Lamartine families to reflect on their past experiences. While each novel has similarities and differences in their styles of narration, each narrator has one main purpose: to make the readers feel connected and present in the events in which the …show more content…

Lily Scheer and Mrs. Joan Buell about their visit to the Lisbons’ house the day Cecilia was brought home from the hospital. While the women were consistent about taking “a Bundt cake in sympathy” for the family, both women recall two different accounts of how the family interacted with them. Mrs. Buell remembers that “Mrs. Libson refused to acknowledge any calamity… ‘As soon as Lily and I took over that Bundt cake, that woman told the girls to go upstairs. We said, ‘It’s still warm, let’s all have a piece,’ but she took the cake and put it the refrigerator. Right in front of us.’ ” On the other hand, Mrs. Scheer states that “ ‘The truth is, Mrs. Libson thanked us quite graciously. Nothing seemed wrong at all…Mrs. Libson invited us out to the sun room and we each had a piece of cake.” She even makes a note that “Joan disappeared at one point” (Eugenides 15). Because the narrators present both accounts, the readers have to decide who is telling the truth. If Mrs. Buell is telling the truth, then Mrs. Scheer fabricated her story to make the Libsons seem more pleasant for whatever reason, but if Mrs. Scheer is telling the truth, then Mrs. Buell was not even present for part of the visit, meaning she would not have happened while she was absent and would not have an accurate

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