Analysis Of The Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold

Peter Jackson’s 2009 film, The Lovely Bones, is based off of the New York Times bestseller novel written by Alice Sebold. Both the book and the movie adaptation tell the story of a young, 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon who is brutally murdered by her neighbor. In both versions, Susie narrates her story from the place between Heaven and Earth, the “in-between,” showing the lives of her family and friends and how each of their lives have changed since her murder. However, the film adaptation and the original novel differ in the sense of the main character focalization throughout, the graphic explanatory to visual extent, and the relationship between the mother and father.

The death of a loved one can result in a trauma where the painful experience causes a psychological scar. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones explores the different ways in which people process grief when they lose a loved one. When young Susie Salmon is killed on her way home from school, the remaining four members of her family all deal differently with their grief. After Susie’s death, her mother, Abigail Salmon, endures the adversity of losing her daughter, her family collapsing, and accepting the loss of the life she never had the opportunity to live. Abigail uses Freud’s defence mechanisms to repress wounds, fears, her guilty desires, and to resolve conflicts, which results in her alienation and

George Harvey is always depicted as the vile, relentless murderer behind the rape and death of Susie Salmon, the protagonist of the novel Lovely Bones. It is easy for the reader to show absolutely no pity for this character. However, in Chapter 15, the author Alice Sebold converts this heartless soul into an individual that urges the reader to offer him sympathy instead. Sebold begins the chapter by reflecting on the tremendous amount of hardships that George Harvey endures in his childhood. As a child, George and his mother depend on each other, as they struggle through life in poverty and dread the presence of his father. Alongside his mother as her accomplice, they turn to theft as a method to receive food and resources behind his

Loss of a loved one and the stages of mourning or grief manifest as overriding themes in The Lovely Bones. Through the voice of Susie Salmon, the fourteen-year-old narrator of the novel, readers get an in-depth look at the grieving process. Susie focuses more on the aftermath and effects of her murder and rape on her family rather than on the event itself. She watches her parents and sister move through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, Alice Sebold makes clear that these categories do not necessarily remain rigid and that individuals deal with grief in various ways. For example, Abigail, Susie's mother, withdraws from her living children,

“Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.” -Alice Sebold. Alice Sebold the author of Lovely Bones creates a story of depression, guilt, and grief with the murder of Susie Salmons. In Lovely Bones the death of Susie affects all those close to her, like her mother, her father and her classmates. Her father grieves with despair as the murderer has yet to be caught. Her mother can not handle her disappearance and finds unnerving ways to cope. Susie’s classmates, Ruth and Ray both find ways to cope with each other and through other connections with Susie. A death of a loved young one is one no one is ever ready for. The grief starts and people find ways to feel guilty. If no mental aid is present the associates will

When we were required to read books for school, other classmates complained about it, but it was one of my favorite parts of class. Even though I didn’t always like the books, I liked to read books that I wouldn’t have picked out to read. I liked being surprised when I enjoyed a book that I didn’t think I would like.

Natalie Goldberg in “Writing Down the Bones,” compares running to writing, “like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step.” I believe majority student hate writing papers as much as professors grading them. They are countless reason why so many student struggle with writing. Majority of the time it’s not fun or interesting, you can feel insecurity or just can’t figures out how to compose you thought into words on paper. As the book says, “don’t try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.”

As a six-month-old baby books had opened up a whole entire new world of experience for me. My inspiration to learn how to read and write was encouraged by my Mother and Grandmother. This is because they read out loud to me before bed occasionally and gave me the best time of my life by introducing me to a library. By two years of age I developed speech and other communication skills. This helped me understand and develop a favorite book, “PJ Funny Bunny,” and I would stare at the pages pretending I was reading them. I would continually pretend to read with other Dr. Seuss books, Smurf pop-up books (I imagined I was a part of these for hours), sniff & scratches, and sensory books. I had just begun

In the last chapter of Alice Sebold’s novel, Lovely Bones, the main character Susie Salmon looks at the events that have transpired because of her death, and happy with the outcome, is finally able to be at peace. Through the use of metaphors and tone Sebold describes what Susie sees as she says goodbye to her family for the last time.

“The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them” (Sebold 94). In the novel, “Lovely Bones”, by Alice Sebold, the author illustrates the descriptions of the protagonist’s, Susie Salmon, a fourteen year old, after her death and her relation with the living. Susie was brutally hurt and killed from a new neighbor, Mr. Harvey, who was never discovered for his numerous crimes. Sebold presents various settings where the protagonist, Susie Salmon, initiates to adjust with her new home in heaven after her terrifying homicide and maintains a connection with life on Earth without her. An important factor of this novel is that the setting is very unusual, since, Susie describes the life on Earth from the heaven she has created, which she can’t leave until she is more than certain that her family will be happy and accept her depart. Susie portrays her own growth throughout heaven as she continues to grow mentally, combining her adolescent notion and her growing maturity acquired in her heaven. Sebold creates a setting that is an important ingredient into the theme and changes in characters, since, it shows many factors of the plot and it refers to the loss and depression that Susie 's loved ones felt after her death.

The characters throughout The Lovely Bones deal with loss very differently. Each of them have their own way to cope with this terrible hole that was branded into their hearts by Susie’s murderer, Mr. Harvey. Jack Salmon, Susie’s father, deal with the loss of his eldest daughter very differently than Susie’s mother, Abigail. In the commencement of the story Jack was very mortified by the death of his daughter and was seemingly in a fog that blurred the real world around him. He began to move the transfer to suspicious throughout the middle of the book.

Both books deal with the emotional affect that the dead have on the living. First, in The Lovely Bones, in the moments immediately after Susie’s death, her soul rushed towards Heaven and, as it did so; it touched a young girl called Ruth. Ruth was sensitive to this presence and despite not having known Susie well from that moment she became intrigued by her life and her death and began to form what would become a strong and eternal link between herself and the dead girl. As Ruth reaches adulthood she becomes sensitive to the dead and to the vibrations that exist in places where deaths had occurred. This affect is not only emotional but life changing; Ruth ultimately leads the police to seriously consider Mr. Harvey as the key suspect in Suzie’s murder. As Ruth is sensitive to those who have passed on, Susie is sensitive to those who remain living. She can read their thoughts, knows their motives, their emotions and their desires. She can remain close to those she loved, she watches over them and occasionally, when they are in a receptive mood, they can feel her presence. These episodes are explained in an extremely gentle manner by Sebold and in such a matter of fact way that it is impossible to doubt the veracity of what we are told.

From an outsider’s perspective, Earth may seem like the exact opposite utopia at the moment. The daily negative television broadcasts, newspaper articles, and online posts about global issues makes it seem like world peace is the most unreachable entity there is. These harsh realities make parenting one of the toughest jobs on the planet, as they must figure out a way to tell their children that the world is not filled with rainbows and happiness. Maggie Smith breaks down the struggles to present the cruel world to the younger generation in her poem “Good Bones”. Smith uses the repetition of the phrase “I keep this from my children” to outline the horrors across the globe, yet disperse knowledge and hope to the kids who will soon hold the

We spent all summer with our noses in books, learning to write calligraphy, braid bracelets, create cards with colored sand, and solve cryptograms. To overcome the boredom, we brought our books along on car rides, these trips hardly seemed long enough.

When I began the second grade, I loved my teacher Mrs. Register. She always told me I could do anything if I put my mind to it. Everyday we would have free time where we could do anything. When free time came, I immediately went to the book-shelf, picked out a book, sat on the floor and began to read imagining I was in another world. Reading books was a way for me to learn new knowledge and apply what I learned to my daily life. Mrs. Register also gave prizes to the fastest reader in the class. One day, she brought brownies and I wanted one really bad. I told myself, “You have to beat everybody in the class during speed reading.” Since my last name was Underwood, I had to wait patiently. When it was finally my turn, I read the passage and beat everybody’s time. The delicious brownie to eat was mine! If it was not for Mrs. Register, I would not have found my passion for reading.