The Virgin Suicide - Essay Example

The Virgin Suicides The Virgin Suicides is a movie directed by Sofia Coppola which is an adaption of the novel written by Jeffery Eugenides. The movie revolves around a group of males who become obsessed by five mysterious sisters that are kept in much isolation by their strict, religious parents. The area is Detroit in 1970’s and the family is upper middle class but with parents who impose much restrictions on them, the youngest of the lot takes a step and commits suicide which leads to more restrictions by their parents.

In the end, the girls going through isolation become severely bound by depression. The girls are home schooled later on in the movie which leads to further isolation and in the end, all of the sisters commit suicide one by one. One of the sisters had already done so in the start of the movie and the remaining four do so by the end of the movie with the neighbors or the lover boys across the street having no idea what the girls had been through to commit such an act in the first place. In the end of the movie, the parents flee to another place in America and sell off everything that belonged to the girls.

The movie represents the effects of solitary confinement on an individual. The girls are subjected to a lot of strictness and solitary confinement which leads them to develop abnormal psychological and social behaviors. Anxiety and depression are the major results when people are kept in conditions like the girls in the movie are kept in. Self- harm and paranoia are other psychological impacts on people who are kept in confinement and with little or no contact with the outside world. This leads to an unstable mental condition and this results in the human beings to develop a paranoid state of mind.

The girls in the movie had become paranoid of their surroundings and the neighborhood boys not to mention. They were plagued by depression and held a very resentful attitude towards their parents and the suburban town they lived in. Suicide attempts in the conditions that the girls lived in is pretty normal because such social conditions impacts the brain. The brain focuses upon the dull parts of life and sees self-harm as a way to get rid of everything that leads them to take such a step. People like these see suicide as a way of escape as they would then not be answerable to anyone else and would be free.

The girls committed suicide because of their parents. The restrictions and strict conditions imposed on them by their parents who used religion as a tool for justifying their acts led the girls to take their lives in the first place. The religious fanatics took obligations and values imposed by Christianity to a very far level which had a very harmful impact on the girls mental health. Isolating them only enhanced this and which ultimately led to a joint suicide by their hands to get freedom.