The Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold - 834 Words

Chilling through and through, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, is a tale of both murder and growth, and, more so, the latter after the former. Introduced, quite bluntly, within the very first two lines of the novel, readers meet the narrator, â€Å"Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. . . murdered [at age 14] on December 6, 1973† (1). Susie, brutally raped and killed by a foul, twisted serial killer by the name of Mr. Harvey, is now giving the audience an eerie, psychologically thrilling recountal on the lives of those she once knew who continue to live. In a fascinating twist, Sebold has Susie go into detailed aspects of Mr. Harvey’s life, past, and the nature of his corruption. Although humans are not inherently or entirely benevolent or malevolent creatures from birth, one can see how the nurture of a human directly influences their qualities as seen through Mr. Harvey’s characterization and development. Before meeting Mr. Harvey, Susie enlightens the audience with a few facts about the murderer. For instance, that her â€Å"mother liked his border flowers†, and that he â€Å"believed in old-fashioned things like eggshells and coffee grounds, which â€Å"he said his own mother had used† (6). For the lead-in of a character who has repeatedly committed the most heinous of crimes, he is depicted, oddly enough, with some aspects of humanity. Later on in the novel, dredging up old memories, Susie observes and conveys the traumatizing childhood of Mr. Harvey. Doing so, Sebold, in an attemptShow MoreRelated`` Lovely Bones `` By Alice Sebold1400 Words   |  6 Pagesby the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them† (Sebold 94). In the novel, â€Å"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 withRead MoreThe Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold1766 Words   |  8 PagesThe Lovely Bones (2002) by Alice Sebold, details the rape and murder of 14-year old Susie Salmon, and the various grief reactions of her family and friends. John Bowlby (Worden 2009) developed the Attachment Theory to describe humanity’s need to form attachments to each other, and the effects of breaking those bonds. When those bonds are broken, the resulting psychological response is grief. In Funeral Psychology and Counseling, Ralph Klicker (2007) discusses the absence of â€Å"rules† in the grievingRead MoreThe Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold1861 Words   |  8 PagesIn Alice Sebold’s novel, The Lovely Bones, the Salmon family learns that their fourteen year old daughter, Susie Salmon, has been raped and murdered. Because of this her father, Jack, sister, Lindsey, and mother, Abigail, all go through their own respective journeys in order to accept this ordeal. During this time of grievance for Susie’s family, her father, Jack, believes that the person responsible for the murder of his daughter is his neighbour, a man named George Harvey, and reports this to detectiveRead MoreThe Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold1122 Words   |  5 Pagesthink of the situation and they do not want to believe it. A person in denial will act differently than someone who is not. They may not speak much, zone out often, and will not make themselves presentable when going out into public. Alice Sebold wrote The Lovely Bones, which was a book about a 14 year old girl, Susie, who was murdered on her way home from school by her neighbor. Her entire family experienced grief from the tragic death. Susie watched down on her family from heaven, and saw her momRead MoreThe Lovely Bones by A lice Sebold1231 Words   |  5 PagesCompare and Contrast of the remediation of Novels to film with reference to The Lovely Bones. The Lovely Bones is a 2002 novel by Alice Sebold about a teenage girl called Susie Salmon, a 14 year old girl who was raped and murdered by her neighbour George Harvey in 1973. She then watches from her own personal Heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her own death. We follow Susie Salmon throughout the story as she witnesses the events onRead MoreThe Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold1181 Words   |  5 Pagesdesire, where that special someone suffered and became a victim of a cruel, mysterious murder. Was the murder itself quick or was it revolting and brutal? Susie Salmon was a victim of a crime that should not be forgiven. In the novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Susie’s past on earth affected people that took part in her life because the past was all that they had of her. Memories of or with Susie were treasured; however, they were also feared by the one who killed Susie’s future. Out of everybodyRead MoreThe Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold1334 Words   |  6 PagesThe book I chose for my 4th quarter book report is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This book contained 352 pages of breathtaking and descriptive writing. The book is classified as a fiction but as a subcategory would fall under modern criminal. The books protagonist is Suzie Salmon, age 14, who is brutally raped and killed. She is struggling with the acceptance of her death and the pain that follows her emotionally to the afterlife. She learns saying goodbye to her love ones is the hardest partRead MoreEssay about The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold1264 Words   |  6 PagesRole Mother? Role model? Motherhood? 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, herRead MoreEssay on Analysis of the Novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold743 Words   |  3 Pageswere the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.† In the novel The Lovely Bones writtenRead MoreMystic River by Dennis Lehane and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold1123 Words   |  5 PagesThe novels, Mystic River by Dennis Lehane and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, include many different elements of the psychoanalytical theory. According to Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalytic theory explains the reasoning behind personality disorders through one’s conscious and unconscious mind (Psychoanalytic Criticism). This theory also states the idea that things that happen to people during childhood can contribute to the way one later functions as an adult (Psychoanalytic Criticism). Both novels