Trey

Suburbia Declassified

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to
"Technically, Mary survived for more than a month, though everyone felt otherwise. After that night, people spoke of the Lisbon girls in the past tense, and if they mentioned Mary at all it was with the veiled wish that she would hurry up and get over with it" (214). The community react to Mary's near-death similar to the way the neighborhood reacted to Cecilia's successful suicide attempt. Through their passive silence, they are hoping to be able to simply put the tragedy behind them with as little acknowledgement towards the events as possible. Shortly after Cecilia's death, the surrounding community has almost no idea on how to react to the suicide. The community responds in the only way they are able to: sending flowers, writing personal notes on condolences, or even nothing at all regarding the nature of the death. As community menbers reacts, they begin to search for something to blame, as shown by their removal of the fence Cecilia had killed herself on. "'It was an accident waiting to happen,' said Mr. Frank, who worked in insurance. 'You couldn't get a policy to cover it.' 'Our kids could jump on it, too,' Mrs. Zaretti insisted during coffee hour following Sunday Mass" (50). Instead of acknowledging the fact that a young girl has killed herself by reaching out to the Lisbons to prevent another occurrence like this, the community members instead attempt to find an evil to blame. The neighborhood bankers