The Lovely Bones By Elizabeth Kübler Ross

When you lose someone, it usually hurts. The loss of someone you love is usually associated with grief. In psychology, they classify the grieving process into the five stages of grief. Elizabeth Kübler Ross came up with the theory of the five stages of grief. According to her theory, the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance, in that order. These five stages of grief can be identified in the characters in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, a novel narrated by a girl, Susie Salmon, who was raped and murdered by George Harvey, a serial killer that lived in her neighborhood, and the story of how her family deals with her loss and what Susie sees and goes through in her heaven. The author illustrates different

Bargaining is “an attempt to persuade God or a higher power to change the reality of loss in exchange for improved behavior or some sacrifice on the part of the bereaved person”(Fundukian). A person in the bargaining stage will beg, or even do things in an attempt to prevent the inevitable. Susie, very briefly, goes through this stage. This stage occurs for Susie when she is being raped. Susie “[knows] he [is] going to kill [her]” (Sebold 14), but she still pleads and begs in an attempt to stop the inevitable. She says “please”, “don’t”, “please don’t”, and “don’t please” (Sebold 13). And when Harvey tells her to do things, she does things she would not normally do. She ‘betters’ her behavior in an attempt to stop the situation, even though it does not work. The author even alludes to the fact that this is the bargaining phase by writing “Franny told me that almost everyone begged ‘please’ before dying” (Sebold 13). The first stage Susie goes through, which occurs during her rape and murder, is therefore the stage of bargaining. It is important to notice that although people usually first go through the stage of denial, and that is not quickly passed, yet right from the get-go, Susie acknowledges that she is going to die. It is also important to note that Susie goes through this stage very

Anger is pretty self explanatory. It is defined as “ a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism”(Anger). When faced with death, the people going through this stage “can be angry with themselves, and/or with others”(Chapman). Susie, in this case, was angry with others, specifically Mr. Harvey, her murderer. Susie was a young, innocent girl, but once she is in her heaven, a much more angry and borderline animalistic side of Susie peeks through very briefly. Susie says “I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living” (Sebold 20). Susie’s upset and anger is quite obvious. This is one of her most outright expression of the anger stage. Susie is expressing displeasure and antagonism towards her murderer, Mr.