Thirteen Reasons Why and The Lovely Bones

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:

A. Jeannette Walls, in her memoir The Glass Castle, demonstrates Erikson’s eight stages of development. Through the carefully recounted stories of her childhood and adolescence, we are able to trace her development from one stage to the next. While Walls struggles through some of the early developmental stages, she inevitably succeeds and has positive outcomes through adulthood. The memoir itself is not only the proof that she is successful and productive in middle adulthood, but the memoir may also have been part of her healing process. Writing is often a release and in writing her memoir and remembering her history, she may have been able to come to terms with her sad past. The memoir embodies both the proof

Although Jack admits that Susie has left, he shifts his attention to another desire, the desire to bring her death to justice through an unlawful path. “‘We’ve just built a tent,” Mr.Harvey said. ‘The neighbors saw us. We’re friends now’ ‘You know something,” my father said. (57). Jack, like everyone else has flaws and his stubbornness leads him to doing something he would not normally do. His unextinguishable passion to find Susie’s murderer leads him to coincidently believe that Mr.Harvey is Susie’s killer. However Mr.Harvey is the murderer of Susie, the evidence shown to Jack and the police show no evidence that Mr.Harvey committed the murder, which further proves that Jack is chasing a blank slate. Jack needs a scapegoat for his grief and chooses to find revenge in unproven subjects. “‘A father’s suspicion’ she began. ‘Is as powerful as a mother’s intuition” (87) says Jack. Once again Jack is trying to find a reason to make his illogical suspicion logical. Jack refuses to believe that Susie’s death occurred without a killer. He puts himself in denial and by doing so he will grieve forever. Jack’s perpetual grief will go on as long he finds things to place guilt on. Furthermore Sebold shows that rage and denial can be used to deal with the death of a loved one.

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

Colson Whitehead once said, “Let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things”. In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” author Jeannette Walls faces despair and turmoil as a result of her impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing. As Jeannette grows up, she watches her father Rex fail to reach his full potential and his dream to build a Glass Castle shatter as his alcoholism takes control. Aware of the devastation her father was causing, she begins to slowly lose faith in him but doesn’t fail to escape her destructive household and pursue her dreams of becoming a journalist. Due to her parent’s lack of parenting and being forced to fend for herself, Jeannette developed a sense of responsibility to care for others and make amends to improve the family’s lifestyle. Despite the turbulence and destruction her parents had caused over the years, unlike her father, Jeannette was able to find the strength to overcome obstacles, developing characteristics that ultimately lead her to achieving her dream, thus illustrating that adversity has the power to shape one’s identity.

Hannah has experiences in the story that change her. In chapter three, Hannah drank watered down wine for the first time. Hannah also got drunk. “ Uncle Sam poured another quarter glass of wine into her glass, then filled it the way with water for the next blessing.” this was on page 16. This experience is a huge role in the story because it causes her to fall asleep and have to crazy dream. Another quote is when Hannah says “I'm not Chaya.” On page 34, “I'm from New Rochelle. And I'm not Chaya, I'm Hannah’ When Shmuel’s eyebrows rose up and lines furrowed his brow, he looked so fierce Hannah moved back a step” Rivka explains to Hannah that she was sick and probably forgot. Hannah has many experiences in the story that change her.

First of all, Hannah doesn't want to respect or remember her history, until she sees why it's important to at the end of the story. When Hannah was with her family at the Seder dinner, she got to open the door for the prophet, Elijah. When she opens the door she gets transported back through time and meets Shmuel and Gitl.

These are simple, short lines but, one can perceive the tone of resignation fueled by complete belief in her thoughts as the truth; thoughts that ultimately led to her self-destruction. There is this one funny thing about humans and the world. There are many truths- too many. And no one is capable of discerning whether they are lies or not. Each one has their own beliefs and nobody is given the advantage of having seen the “ultimate truth” because what we think our truths are, are truths merely because we believe them to be so. Hannah’s “truth” was her belief that she could not be saved and that suicide was her only way. So, we are only given the right to believe that what we think is

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

There’s not an actual reason why he failed but what’s true is Mr. Poter doesn’t uses is maturity or his professional skills to understand that there is actually a problem going on. While the last cassette is a recording of the actual conversation he had with Hannah. It shows that she tried to get help and many times throughout the book but no one will listen. Clay tried to stay away but at the night of the party he didn’t, he let his guard down. Clay actually tried to help Hannah but at the end Hannah ended up pushing him away. Clay thinks he could’ve tried harder and actually talk to her and listen. Clay was never mortified about himself he’s a guy that’s worth it because he stand up for what he believes. What actually matter was nobody cared

Additionally, Hannah only utilized the authorities in the school (to whom youth facing issues like hers are encouraged to come to) as a last resort, after she had already decided to take her own life. As previously mentioned, she went to talk to Mr. Porter, her guidance counselor at school, in search of one last glimmer of hope. She discussed with him the sexual assault she suffered, among other hardships, and her desire to end her life. His response painfully disappointed her. He essentially told her that getting over it may be her best option, and she left agitated. She hoped he would follow and not let her go, realizing she was serious about suicide, but he didn’t. Along the same lines as

I agree with your point that Hannah is a good mother, however I think it must be considered that she really wasn’t accepting of his newly-admitted sexuality. As seen by the line, “You’re ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous” (Kushner 82), said by Hannah in response to Joe’s confession, she really wasn’t comfortable with and/or accepting of the fact that Joe finally embraced his true sexuality. Furthermore, as you had pointed out, she did move to New York, but I feel that the reasons for her actions are debatable—on the one hand, she may have moved to help, but on the other, she also may have done so to essentially “talk Joe out of” these claims that he is homosexual. However, Hannah possessed a very different attitude in her relationship with

Later she gains a sum of money and opens her house to sever three adopted children and a stream of boarders. However, she kills her favorite son, Plum, because he experiences heroin addiction after returning from World War I. Hannah dies in fire accident when Sula is in high school. Sula and Nel keep a profound friendship until the death of a neighborhood boy, Chicken Little. He accidently falls into the river and drowns when Sula plays with him and Nel. Sula worries that Shadrack witnesses the accident, so she goes to his home for confirmation.

Pretended that nothing had happened, Hannah had hidden her emotions inside, even though she was desperate for help and

By the end of the novel Hannah began to doubt her self-identity because of the “snowball effect” which started with her having to move to a new town, and thus became socially vulnerable. This resulted in others creating a string of false gossip about her, which caused Hannah to shut people out on the assumption that