Lovely Bones Critical Analysis Paper

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.

Suppressing negative emotions and unresolved conflicts can eventually have an impact on different aspects of one’s life. Abigail has restrained her grief for so long, and as her husband’s pursuit to find Susie’s murderer tests her patience, she uses Freud’s displacement defence mechanism “as a means by which the impulse can be expressed-allowing a catharsis of the original emotion-but toward a safer target (GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA). Len Fenerman, the local detective, becomes Abigail’s doorway out of her pent up emotions. She indulges in an affair with him as he offers her security and an escape from reality. In heaven, Susie deliberates upon this action:

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,

To follow, one can choose to resort to another lover or to isolate themselves from their family. Susie’s mother, Abigail may have been the one who took Susie’s death with greatest impact.

The characters in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones are faced with the difficult task of overcoming the loss of Susie, their daughter and sister. Jack, Abigail, Buckley, and Lindsey each deal with the loss differently. However, it is Susie who has the most difficulty accepting the loss of her own life. Several psychologists separate the grieving process into two main categories: intuitive and instrumental grievers. Intuitive grievers communicate their emotional distress and “experience, express, and adapt to grief on a very affective level” (Doka, par. 27). Instrumental grievers focus their attention towards an activity, whether it is into work or into a hobby, usually relating to the loss (Doka par. 28). Although each character deals with

The story called The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is about a girl named Susie who had gotten raped and killed at the age of 14. Throughout the story it was about life after Susie with her immediate family like her mother Abagail, her father Jack, and her younger sister Lindsey and how they adjust to life after Susie, as well as the effects of Susie’s life in heaven being away from her family. The death of Susie had a bad impact on her immediate family psychologically and emotionally and each of the character’s grieving process of susie’s death was different . With Abigail the death of Susie causes for her to be denial of the death and become depressed as well. Jack goes through denial with Susie’s death and as the story goes on he comes

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.”

For example, each family member goes into Susie’s old room alone to grieve her death .They finally seem to realize that they need each other to get through this terrible time and accept that even though they will never have Susie back but can hope and try together to figure out what happened to Susie and who did it. Throughout the book they must learn to love each other again.The theme of grief is the most important theme in the novel. The Salmon family must learn to overcome the loss of Susie. Everyone grieves in their own way and finds a way to blame themselves or feel like its their own fault that the situation happened. Susie's family feels a sense of guilt for not being there for her. For example, Susie's father, Jack grieves for Susie.He feels like he wasn't there when his daughter needed him most which leads him to becomes obsessed with feeling responsible for finding the killer. Lindsey, Susie’s sister grieves over her sister by becoming a stronger person and not to talking about it. Susie’s also mourns her own death and the missed opportunity of getting to grow up, but more significantly, Susie grieves over the loss of living people. This theme allows us to understand the characters better.

Lily who loses her mother at a very young age of four shapes her life around the indistinctive memory of her mother’s death. Lily has been profoundly affected by her own mother’s death; she believes that living with someone else’s death can be more painful than dying.

The characters in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones are faced with the difficult task of overcoming the loss of Susie, their daughter and sister. Jack, Abigail, Buckley, and Lindsey each deal with the loss differently. However, it is Susie who has the most difficulty accepting the loss of her own life. Several psychologists separate the grieving process into two main categories: intuitive and instrumental grievers. Intuitive grievers communicate their emotional distress and “experience, express, and adapt to grief on a very affective level” (Doka, par. 27). Instrumental grievers focus their attention towards an activity, whether it is into work or into a hobby, usually relating to the loss (Doka par. 28). Although each character deals with

The book switches out between them and tells their story, each having their own chapters. Because it's written in this point of view we can get into the character's mind and know how they feel, what they think, etc. It also allows us to see a certain event in both of their perspectives and hear their thoughts about it or how they felt. If this book was written in 3rd person omniscient we would be able to hear the thoughts of the many other characters. I think it would get confusing because it would be so many perspectives of one situation and it would make the story

No mother should ever be obligated bury their child. The child should have a chance to live a life and at some point bury their own mother towards the end of her term. However, in the case of Lucinda, this unfortunate event does not hesitate her from continuing life. In fact, it encourages her to understand the meaning of life and the necessity of having to have both the valuable and the atrocious to create a balance.

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