Culminating Essay
In ‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold, the way one dies, their desires, needs, and qualities possessed ALL affect the way their Heaven will be like when they die. The protagonist, Susie Salmon, had died young and violently, and was struggling to come to terms with her own death. She even expresses that her biggest wish is that she were alive and her killer were dead. Susie starts to become obsessed with the living world, often living vicariously through other people such as her younger sister Lindsey Salmon, or watching them incessantly. Susie’s struggle to accept her own death is vital to her character development. She starts off as a dreamy, innocent girl, but once she recognizes that she truly has died, she is able to
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mature and tell the readers the story of her death and the events afterwards. The Author uses metaphors, visually descriptive language and symbolism to illuminate that Susie’s character development as she comes to terms with her death. Firstly, Sebold has the narrator, Susie, use visually descriptive language to emphasize her desires, as well as her development into maturity. In ‘The Lovely Bones’, when one dies their heaven is a reflection of their desires. Susie’s heaven consists of “soccer goalposts… and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin… all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools built in the 1960s. Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to make them feel modern… the colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax High.” (Sebold, 17). Susie’s heaven is a copy of Fairfax High, and she has always expressed great excitement about attending high school. In fact her dream was to be the queen of Fairfax High. Susie’s vivid description of her heaven reveals her simple desires, which is to continue to live as a teenage girl and live her life to the fullest. Since she died so young, it was difficult for her to accept that she will never be able to see herself blossom into a young women, she wishes she had more time. Even while alive, Susie was quite obsessed with time. Her dream was to be a wildlife photographer, and as a photographer she would have the ability to capture a single moment in time. She describes taking a photo of her mother as rescuing “the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from [Susie] because [she] owned it.” (240). Death is also a way to capture a moment in time forever as well. Just as in that photo of her mother, Abigail Salmon, she is encapsulated in that moment forever, Susie is encapsulated as a fourteen year old girl forever. In addition, since Susie died such a violent death, it can be difficult for her to look back on that day and accept it, let alone tell others. Especially because as much as Susie wanted to attend high school, she had also longed to fall in love and have an intimate sexual relationship with another person. Had she died of old age, Susie would be more ready to move onto her actual Heaven because at that point of her life she had the chance to fulfill all of her dreams and goals. Such as grow into a young woman, become a wildlife photographer, fall in love, start a family and die of an old age. Since Susie had died at such a delicate age of a preteen transitioning into a graceful young woman, she feels as if she were stuck in time at this awkward age. Her only sexual experience is of a rape, and then death shortly after. However, once she does comes to terms with her death and shares her story, she describes it as losing “the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that [Susie] knew [she] wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on earth is real and it is every day. It is like the flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.” (211). The fact that telling her story alleviates her pain, and it encourages her to keep sharing shows character development on her part because she is accepting the way she died. Susie Salmon has not let death take away her dreaminess and upbeat attitude, but it has taught her how to heal and mature. Secondly, Sebold uses symbols like candles, purgatory, and even bones to represent Susie and how she copes with being dead, while the people she loves are still alive.
For example, while Susie helplessly watches her father get assaulted, and all she can do is blow out the candle in her father’s den. She describes her feelings as wanting her father “ to go away and leave [Susie] be. [She] was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, [Susie] blew that lonely, flickering candle out” (159). The candle symbolizes Susie’s inability to be present with the living, and it represents that all she can do for them is something as insignificant as blowing out a candle This can be frustrating for Susie who cares for and loves her father. To see that she can do nothing to help him in a situation where he’s in danger can fuel her obsession with the living. In addition, Susie describes her heaven to be a place between Earth and Heaven, also known as purgatory, but Susie calls it the ‘Inbetween’. This place is the “thick blue line separated the air and ground an Inbetween, where heaven’s horizon met Earth’s.” (38) in her brother, Buckley Salmon’s, drawing. She is stuck in the Inbetween, and can not move forward from her death nor move onto her actual Heaven. Lastly, Susie talks about “the lovely bones that had grown around [her] absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent” (363). The …show more content…
lovely bones represents Susie’s body, and they also represent the connections and ties that keeps her family together. When she finally accepts her death, she begins to “to see things in a way that let [her] hold the world without [her] in it. The events that [her] death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what [Susie] came to see as this miraculous body had been [her] life.” (363). This is another turning point for Susie because she recognizes that her death was unpredictable and she can see a world without her in it. Before, Susie had tried to place herself on Earth in Ruth’s body, and she had often lived vicariously through her sister. She could accept the boundaries that death has placed on her, and has tried to be a part of the living world by blowing out candles or inhabiting Ruth’s body, but the fact that she can see a world without herself in it, it shows that she has moved on. Susie has matured significantly while in heaven by finally detaching herself from the living world, and recognizing her death. Thirdly, Sebold uses metaphors and similes to emphasize how Susie’s positive and negative experiences that have shaped her personality, and her final maturity.
For example, she describes her first kiss with Ray Singh with the simile - "Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.” (86). Susie decided to call her first kiss a beautiful gasoline rainbow, which is quite eccentric. It is meant to give the readers a glimpse into how the kiss felt to Susie. Gasoline rainbows are not like the rainbows in the sky that are shaped in a perfect arch with all the colours equally shown. They are messy, dispersed, and imperfect just like her first kiss. Also, had Mr. Harvey not killed her, Susie would have died slowly and painfully. She describes herself during this time, before Mr. Harvey finally kills her, as “an animal already dying” (16). Comparing herself to an animal shows just how vulnerable she was, and how gory her death was. Keeping that in mind, her heaven was meant to cater to her emotional scars. The high school setting was meant to fulfill her desires of ‘attending’ a high school, the plethora of dogs and music was all meant to comfort her and help her cope. In addition, Susie compares her sister’s sex to hers by using windows and walls. She says that “In the walls of my [Suse’s] sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers [Lindsey’s] there were windows.” (142). Susie’s sex was violent and gory, hence blood, while Lindsey’s sex was consensual
and affectionate, hence the windows. Windows could symbolize how there was light and warmth with Lindsey’s sexual experience. While the windowless, bloody walls of Susie’s could represent how she was caged in like an animal, and also treated like one too. Susie was the most excited to grow up, and to have sexual experiences but her only sexual experience was painful and traumatizing. She is aware of her loss, and this could explain why she unable to accept that the way she died, and the timing of her death because she was at the cusp of her youth. However, the fact that Susie recognizes, and accepts that her sister was allowed to had this positive experience while she wasn’t shows her maturity and character development.** Susie Salmon had struggled to see a world without her in it while she was in purgatory, or the Inbetween. However, when she can finally come to terms with her death, there is a significant maturity that came with that recognition. She is able to objectively tell the story of her death, as well as the events that followed it. She tells her story using symbolism, visually descriptive language, as well as metaphors and similes to fully engage the readers into her narrative and illuminate her character development. In the novel ‘The Lovely Bones’ Susie Salmon may be deceased, but she lives on through the memories of her friends, and family who knew Susie, and loved her.
“The Lovely Bones” is a book written by Alice Sebold. It was published in 2002, and it’s about Susie Salmon, a girl that was murdered and no watches her family and murderer from her own heaven. She tries to balance her feeling and watch out for her family since her murderer is still free and with nobody knowing how dangerous he is. In 2009, a movie adapted from the book came out as well.
The Lovely Bones’s combination of themes work together to expose the raw emotion of a family in pain over the death of a precious loved one. The first and most significant theme to be presented in the novel is that of mortality. Throughout the novel, as Susie looks back over her violent death and its effects on her family, she makes a point that when someone dies, that person's desires and needs pass over with them into the afterlife (Thomas). For example, from watching her sister and Ruth Connor, she realizes that the concept of love is something she still wishes she could have, even in heaven. Her sister Lindsey meets a boy by the name of Samuel, and Ruth grows closer to Susie's first real crush, Ray Singh. These observations by Susie almost
Death: the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism. It is scientific. Straight down to the facts. Something is born, it lives, and it dies. The cycle never stops. But what toll does death take on those around it? The literary world constantly attempts to answer this vital question. Characters from a wide realm of novels experience the loss of a loved one, and as they move on, grief affects their every step. In The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, the roles of Lindsey, Abigail, and Ruth all exhibit the effect of dealing with death over time; the result is a sizable amount of change which benefits a person’s spirit.
A symbol is a unique term because it can represent almost anything such as people, beliefs, and values. Symbols are like masks that people put on to describe their true self. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the author uses Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley to represent a mockingbird which illustrates the theme of innocence by presenting these characters as two harmless citizens that do not pose a threat to Maycomb.
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
In addition, Jack showed his inability to let go of Susie by keeping her physical belongings with him. From heaven, Susie is watching all of this happen, noting that “I knew then he would never give me up. He would never count me as one of the dead. I was his daughter, and he was my dad, and he had loved me as much as he could. I had to let him go” (...). The final sentence is very significant. It is the time when Susie recognizes the need for her to let go if she truly wishes to end her family’s suffering. As Susie is able to forget the past, so does Jack. He soon realizes that Susie lives in his past, memories, and not in objects. Specifically, it is not until Jack survives his heart attack that he fully accepts that his daughter has left. “Last night it had been [Susie’s] father who had finally said it, ‘[Susie’s]never coming home.’ A clear and easy piece of truth that everyone who had ever known me had accepted” (289). Upon realizing this truth, Jack is able to continue with his life, job, and most importantly, to refocus his attention to his two other
...in her character during her stay at the hospital. Susie realizes that her patient is afraid of dying and thus she comforts her as she weeps and makes her feel loved.
First of all, ‘The Lovely Bones’ is about a girl named Susie Salmon and tells a story of how she died and how people get along together and live without her. She was a normal fourteen-year-old girl when she was murdered in the novel 's opening pages. She narrates the rest of her story from heaven, often returning to Earth to watch over her loved ones; mostly family, some friends and Mr. Harvey and the other people he kills. ‘Lovely Bones’ is represents Susie’s body the connection of heaven to earth, earth to heaven. This is main symbolism of this book as Susie. ‘She began to see things without her and the events that her death will influence her in heaven and her family and friends in earth.’ In this passage, the author talks about her life
There is probably no one, among people, who has not considered death as a subject to think about or the events, people, and spirits that they would face after death. Also, since we were little kids we were asking our parents what death is and what is going to happen after we die. People have always linked death with fear, darkness, depression, and other negative feelings but not with Emily Dickinson, who was a reclusive poet from Massachusetts who was obsessed with death and dying in her tons of writings. She writes “Because I could not stop for Death” and in this particular poem she delivers a really different idea of death and the life after death. In the purpose of doing that, the speaker encounters death which was personalized to be in a form of gentleman suitor who comes to pick her up with his horse-drawn carriage for a unique death date that will last forever. In fact, she seems completely at ease with the gentleman. Additionally, their journey at the beginning seems pretty peaceful; as they pass through the town, she sees normal events such as children who are playing, fields of grain, and a sunset. After this, dusk takes place and the speakers gets chilly because she was not ready for this journey and she did not wear clothes that would make her feel warm. Consequently, readers get the idea that death is not a choice, so when it comes, that is it. Emily Dickinson, in her poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” uses personification, imagery, and style to deliver her positive and peaceful idea of death and life after death.
In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” she uses the structure of her poem and rhetoric as concrete representation of her abstract beliefs about death to comfort and encourage readers into accepting Death when He comes. The underlying theme that can be extracted from this poem is that death is just a new beginning. Dickinson deftly reassures her readers of this with innovative organization and management, life-like rhyme and rhythm, subtle but meaningful use of symbolism, and ironic metaphors.
Death is a controversial and sensitive subject. When discussing death, several questions come to mind about what happens in our afterlife, such as: where do you go and what do you see? Emily Dickinson is a poet who explores her curiosity of death and the afterlife through her creative writing ability. She displays different views on death by writing two contrasting poems: one of a softer side and another of a more ridged and scary side. When looking at dissimilar observations of death it can be seen how private and special it is; it is also understood that death is inevitable so coping with it can be taken in different ways. Emily Dickinson’s poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died” show both parallel and opposing views on death.
Often when a person suffers through a tragic loss of a loved one in his or her life they never fully recover to move on. Death is one of hardest experiences a person in life ever goes through. Only the strong minded people are the ones that are able to move on from it whereas the weak ones never recover from the loss of a loved one. In the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks, character Billy Ansel – having lost his family serves as the best example of brokenness after experiencing death. Whether it is turning to substance abuse, using his memory to escape reality or using Risa Walker as a sexual escape, Billy Ansel never fully recovers from the death of his twins and his wife. This close analysis of Billy’s struggle with death becomes an important lesson for all readers. When dealing with tragedies humans believe they have the moral strength to handle them and move on by themselves but, what they do not realize is that they need someone by their side to help them overcome death. Using unhealthy coping mechanism only leads to life full of grief and depression.
Emily Dickinson had a fascination with death and mortality throughout her life as a writer. She wrote many poems that discussed what it means not only to die, but to be dead. According to personal letters, Dickinson seems to have remained agnostic about the existence of life after death. In a letter written to Mrs. J. G. Holland, Emily implied that the presence of death alone is what makes people feel the need for heaven: “If roses had not faded, and frosts had never come, and one had not fallen here and there whom I could not waken, there were no need of other Heaven than the one below.” (Bianchi 83). Even though she was not particularly religious, she was still drawn to the mystery of the afterlife. Her poetry is often contemplative of the effect or tone that death creates, such as the silence, decay, and feeling of hopelessness. In the poem “I died for beauty,” Dickinson expresses the effect that death has on one's identity and ability to impact the world for his or her ideals.
Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young. This allowed her to spend her time writing and lamenting, instead of seeking out a husband or a profession. Eventually, she limited her outside activities to going to church. In her early twenties, she began prayed and worshipped on her own. This final step to total seclusion clearly fueled her obsession with death, and with investigating the idea of an afterlife. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson rides in a carriage with the personification of Death, showing the constant presence of death in her life. Because it has become so familiar, death is no longer a frightening presence, but a comforting companion. Despite this, Dickinson is still not above fear, showing that nothing is static and even the most resolute person is truly sure of anything. This point is further proven in “I heard a Fly buzz”, where a fly disrupts the last moment of Dickinson’s life. The fly is a symbol of death, and of uncertainty, because though it represents something certain—her impending death—it flies around unsure with a “stumbling buzz”. This again illustrates the changing nature of life, and even death. “This World is not Conclusion” is Dickinson’s swan song on the subject of afterlife. She confirms all her previous statements, but in a more r...
Myra, who is dying of illness, escapes the confinement of her stuffy, dark apartment. She refuses to succumb to death in an insubordinate manner. By leaving the apartment and embracing open space, Myra rejects the societal pressure to be a kept woman. Myra did not want to die “like this, alone with [her] mortal enemy” (Cather, 85). Myra wanted to recapture the independence she sacrificed when eloping with Oswald. In leaving the apartment, Myra simultaneously conveys her disapproval for the meager lifestyle that her husband provides for her and the impetus that a woman needs a man to provide for her at all. Myra chose to die alone in an open space – away from the confinement of the hotel walls that served as reminders of her poverty and the marriage that stripped her of wealth and status. She wished to be “cremated and her ashes buried ‘in some lonely unfrequented place in the mountains, or in the sea” (Cather, 83). She wished to be alone once she died, she wanted freedom from quarantining walls and the institution of marriage that had deprived her of affluence and happiness. Myra died “wrapped in her blankets, leaning against the cedar trunk, facing the sea…the ebony crucifix in her hands” (Cather, 82). She died on her own terms, unconstrained by a male, and unbounded by space that symbolized her socioeconomic standing. The setting she died in was the complete opposite of the space she had lived in with Oswald: It was free space amid open air. She reverted back to the religious views of her youth, symbolizing her desire to recant her ‘sin’ of leaving her uncle for Oswald, and thus abandoning her wealth. “In religion , desire was fulfillment, it was the seeking itself that rewarded”( Cather, 77), it was not the “object of the quest that brought satisfaction” (Cather, 77). Therefore, Myra ends back where she began; she dies holding onto