Who Is The Hero In The Lovely Bones

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

Bethie Maguire, a once innocent child, had her life changed forever in just one night. The young twelve year old girl takes on more responsibility than a girl her age should have because of a specific event that caused her tremendous pain all throughout her life. In the novel Rape a Love Story written by Joyce Carol Oats, Oats takes the reader on a journey through the perspective of a rape victim’s daughter. Because of this stylistic approach, Oats had showed the reader how a once innocent life could be taken away so easily from one night through the eyes of a victim.

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

“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

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

One of the most complex and elaborate characters in Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison is Bone. Throughout the story Bone has to live a life where she thinks that she is the leading mystery of the trouble being caused. She has numerous unhappy situations and is in no way self-satisfied with herself. She doesn’t appreciate who she is physically. She constantly thinks she is the most homely and dull person who causes the most inconvenience in the family. This sense of selflessness is mainly due to the physical and sexual abuse brought upon by Daddy Glen, Bone’s stepfather. Unfortunately, the assaults were stretched out over a long period of time, leaving little chance for Bone to recover as an adult if any at all. I decided to take

In Lucky, Alice Sebold shows how her life was utterly changed when she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus as a college freshman when she was eighteen-year-old, how she struggled to be understood by the people around, from family to her friends, and how she tried to recover from the physical and psychological trauma and finally triumphed, getting the attacker arrested and convicted. Just as written in the book, "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."(Sebold, 54)

The author was seeking justice against her father’s shooter. Though her father had let the ordeal go, she chose infiltrate the attacker’s privacy and live with their family as a journalist. As she learned more about them, her thinking shifted towards the shooter. She did not forgive him but when he was not released with all of the other prisoners, she felt sorrow for the family and herself. She has learned from the family about the attacker and felt sorry that she had ever tried to seek vengeance against him. He was already shown justice but after talking with the family, she only wanted his forgiveness, forgetting about seeking

Matthew Olzmann’s “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” and Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” are both written to express their feelings, thoughts, and messages about the world. Both poems are closely related since they are both about what the world is coming to. Olzmann’s poem is about humanity vs nature, while Smith’s poem is about how the world is not safe for her children. Both poems come’s up with a problem that questions the reader to think about their choices in the world.

In the book The Lovely Bones, Susie Salmon a fourteen-year-old girl gets raped and murdered in a cornfield and in a sink-hole, her murder Mr.Harvey, her neighbor had built. He dismembered her body parts and took her charm bracelet. Susie’s father tried to find her murderer with the case detective Len. When Jack, Susie’s father helps Mr. Harvey build a tent out of sticks he gets a suspicious feeling Mr. Harvey murdered her daughter and Mr. Harvey noticed so he told him it’s time for him to leave. His other daughter, Lindsey breaks into Mr. Harvey’s house and rips out a page of his journal.

When one of her students is shot, the victim’s sister Angelica comes out and states it was her brother that was shot and, “…he was just shot in the leg. He’s going to be okay.” The girl is emotionally stable and unfazed by this horrific event going as far as to say, “That’s what you get for gangbanging.” In this case the strong diction indicates the common occurrence of this in many student’s lives. It is important to realize Beatty only speaks about these shootings and broken homes while she remains only a witness to these situations and after effects. Looking at Beatty’s perspective on the various issues provokes the reader to thoroughly examine how she could have such personal ties while never being a victim of their

One of the most complex and elaborate characters in Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison is Bone. Throughout the story Bone has to live a life where she thinks that she is the leading mystery of the trouble being caused. She has numerous unhappy situations and is in no way self-satisfied with herself. She doesn 't appreciate who she is physically. She constantly thinks she is the most homely and dull person who causes the most inconvenience in the family. This sense of selflessness is mainly due to the physical and sexual abuse brought upon by Daddy Glen, Bone 's stepfather. Unfortunately, the assaults were stretched out over a long period of time, leaving little chance for Bone to recover as an adult if any at all. I decided to

In the opinion of journalists, politicians, a jury of her peers, and thousands of people who read the headlines, Aileen Wournos was a monster. Listen to the outcry of the friends and family of the seven victims of Aileen’s predatory hunt along the I-75 highway in Florida. As Nick Broomfield, a director who produced two documentaries about Aileen, said, “The idea of a woman killing men – a man-hating lesbian prostitute who tarnished the reputations of all her victims – brought Aileen Wuornos a special kind of hatred.” Aileen was a murderer, a monster. Monsters do not have rhyme or reason to their actions, pasts that could ground them in humanity, or a place in society. However, others feel differently. A strange blend of victim and serial killer, many scholars are looking at the case of Aileen Wuornos to see if more than just her crimes got her convicted. Aileen was a poor, lesbian prostitute who had been looked down on all her life, and many believe those are the attributes that got Aileen sentenced to death so quickly. Indeed, Aileen’s case was more than just a murder trial, but a statement on how society disapproves of women who do not conform to heteronormative femininity.

The movie Braveheart is centered on a man named William Wallace who leads the Scottish rebels in a revolt against the English monarchy. Wallace is the story’s protagonist. Wallace is seen as a young Scottish boy who sees the struggle for freedom being fought for by his dad from the English monarchy led by Longshanks. When Wallace’s dad returns dead, he is sheltered by his uncle. During this time, he is taught the qualities of a true man.