Comparing The Memory Keeper's Daughter And The Lovely Bones

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards, and Alice Seabold’s The Lovely Bones, both similarly explore the ways in which grief influences and ultimately structures the lives of their central characters. Although the authors utilise vastly disparate situations, Edwards and Seabold both depict the development of their families in response to the demise of a relative. Through the progressive transformation of their protagonists, the major themes are exposed to reveal how their struggle inflicts their future and the surrounding characters. The role of grief is established to determine how individuals seek closure through a variety of demeanours, in that the central couples exhibit dishonesties and cheating as a consequence of their loss. A

In both texts lies and cheating emerge as parents drift further from their partners and children. Norah’s affair with a man named Howard creates tension between the couple and although David is aware, he remains silent “because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.” The central couple are again symbolically compared to the solar system, as they “circled each other now, fixed in their separate orbits.” David’s obsession with photography becomes a distraction from his grief, but their “lost daughter still hovered between them; their lives had shaped themselves around her absence.” Eventually, he leaves town and travels back to his childhood home in an attempt to find closure. Similarly, in Seabold’s text, Abigail has an affair with Len Freeman seeking comfort in an effort feel emotion again. In his presence, “the need to get out, to smash, destroy, rescind, overtook her.” Abigail “needed Len to drive the dead daughter out” and to take away “her rage, her loss, her despair.” These lies and secrets create a barrier between Jack and Abigail, as Susie observes how he tries to touch her “and she [pulls] away over to the edge of the bed. But how in the presence of the police she seemed to bloom.” The “pragmatic, prim mistress” that Susie knew her mother to always be “was gone. She was

David and Norah’s house becomes symbolic of their continually disintegrating relationship. Originally, it represents their mutual love and the family they were destined to have, however, David’s lie transforms the house into a reminder of their loss. Norah’s suffering causes her to sell the house because “whatever life her daughter had known, whatever Norah had experienced of her daughter, had happened in that house.” Her decision to remarry represents her ability to heal and progress past her grief. Although they divorce, David never lets go of his love for Norah “for multitude of ways in which their love had failed them all, and they love. Grief, it seemed, was a physical place.” David’s sorrow haunts him up until his death, carrying his lies and suffering to his grave. Contradictorily, Seabold employs the theme of recovery to conclude her novel. The light outside on their front porch becomes symbolic of their hope for Susie to return. On the night that Jack attempts to kill Mr. Harvey, it is turned out, representing the closure they will obtain when her murderer is finally captured. Jack seeks resolution through Mr Harvey’s death, which is foreshadowed by Susie earlier when she comments “how to Commit the Perfect Murder was an old game. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.” The birth of Lindsey’s daughter adds a sense of formal