The Lovely Bones Analysis

Alice Sebold’s, The Lovely Bones, not only explores the grief which arises in the characters but also uses important metaphors and points of view to enable the reader to feel sympathy towards the characters who have just suffered from a loss.

There are specific stages of grief. They reflect common reactions people have as they try to make sense of a loss. An important part of the healing process is experiencing and accepting the feelings that come as a result of the loss. In The Lovely Bones, we can identify three main stages: denial, anger or depression, and acceptance. Denial occurs right after the event, in which the individual suffers from conflicting feelings that are controlling them and that do not allow them to move on. People in denial have not faced the real truth; they do not want to believe that it has happened. After denial the individual suffers from anger and or depression where they become enraged by what has happened and by who caused the event. Finally, the affected one settles in to acceptance, where they realize that they can’t reverse time or change events (Villaneda).

Sebold’s use of metaphors and points of view represent the denial phase of grief within the characters of the story.

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.”(Salmon, 320). Here the fish represents Susie in a way that she is also trapped in an in-between world like the fish is trapped in a bowl. She can see everything from the inside but nobody can really acknowledge her presence. “The only sound I made after that was the weak tinkling of bells” (Salmon, 5). This represents, from her point of view, the fact that she is still trying to escape from Mr. Harvey and does not really want to admit to the fact that she is helpless in this ...

... middle of paper ...

... 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.” (Salmon, 320). This is the most significant quote in this novel. The lovely bones represent her dead body that has unified the family. After this terrible loss all they needed was each other and Susie’s death achieved this. This reflects Susie’s final acceptance of her death.

In conclusion, the loss of a loved one and the stages of grief accumulate as a progressive and dominant theme in The Lovely Bones. You witness the emotional rollercoaster that the characters had been through and their heart-breaking trauma. Loss and sorrow run throughout the story, but what makes the book special is the thought that the dead need to let go of the living just as the living needs to redeem from their losses as well.