When dealing with death letting go proves to be one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome. Some families are incapable of moving on and spend their days reminiscing on the loss of a loved one. The Lovely Bones written by Alice Sebold follows the Salmon family and the grief they experience after the morbid death of their daughter, Susie. Throughout the text the family becomes more dysfunctional and the characters seem to drift away from one another. What was once a loving family morphs into an isolated group of mourning individuals. However, when Grandma Lynn visits she recognizes the negative atmosphere and yearns to fix the broken family. For the first few days of her arrival she brings light back into the Salmon household. She connects …show more content…
Susie’s family try to mask their pain by acting oblivious to the situation. They rarely speak of her passing and do not properly mourn. Physcologists agree that this process is a tell-tale sign of dysfunction, “Family therapists describe the fashion in which the Salmons maintain their systemic dysfunctionality as a psychological state of homeostasis, which Barnard and Corrales define as a family's tendency--no matter how detrimental it may be--to preserve constancy,” (Womack). The Salmons try to live a normal life after the death of their daughter. This leads to many of the family members bottling up their emotions, which leads to outbursts that occur later on in the text. Lindsey, in an attempt to deny pity, refuses to acknowledge the family’s loss, “‘What exactly is my loss?’” (Sebold). Susie’s death causes Lindsey to turn into a cold and bitter child. She focuses on hiding her pain, rather than evolving as a person. This flawed mourning process causes the members of the family to suffer mentally and revert into …show more content…
When Susie dies Lindsey tries draw as little attention as possible, going to school as soon as she can. Instead of moving on and growing as an individual, Lindsey becomes preoccupied with containing her emotions. When Grandma Lynn shows up she helps to shift Lindsey´s focus. Though Grandma Lynn´s advice may be shallow it encourages Lindsey to pursue self-improvement, "You need to get yourself starved down, honey, before you keep fat on for too long. Baby fat is just another way to say ugly," (Sebold 100). After this Lindsey becomes focused on achieving excellence. At the end of the text she excels in education and athletics; she also finds love, “Lindsey grows up, marries her high school sweetheart, and has a baby,” (Mendelsohn). All of this may have never happened if Grandma Lynn had never shifted her focus off of Susie's death and onto her own
While she might think that her plans are working, they only lead her down a path of destruction. She lands in a boarding house, when child services find her, she goes to jail, becomes pregnant by a man who she believed was rich. Also she becomes sentenced to 15 years in prison, over a street fight with a former friend she double crossed. In the end, she is still serving time and was freed by the warden to go to her mother’s funeral. To only discover that her two sisters were adopted by the man she once loved, her sister is with the man who impregnated her, and the younger sister has become just like her. She wants to warn her sister, but she realizes if she is just like her there is no use in giving her advice. She just decides that her sister must figure it out by
It is never told exactly what has caused Lisa Shilling to slip into this state of depression, which helps to make the atmosphere of the novel very mysterious. Just when it appears that Lisa is getting better, another episode occurs. The story is disturbing, being set around Lisa’s school and home. With other characters in the story, such as Lisa’s parents, causing conflicts with Lisa receiving proper treatment, the story is given a disturbing yet realistic feel.
“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.
Throughout the film, we learn that each woman has setbacks within her household. One sister has a terrible drinking problem and ultimately loses her job due to excessive drinking and tardiness. The second sister has had several pregnancies that each result in miscarriages due to high stress. As a therapist, there are several different elements to review.
The genre is “fiction, a supernatural thriller, and a bildungsroman” (Key Facts, 1). The Lovely Bones is written in first person. The novel is said to be complex, a distant place, and then a time of grieving from a loss of an innocent child who was murdered (Guardian, 1). The view of Heaven presented in The Lovely Bones is where you do not have to worry about anything, you get what you want, and understand why you want it. In this novel, Suzie teaches her family what she had learned from her life. The climax of the novel is when Suzie is able to achieve her dream to grow up when Heaven allows her to inhabit Ruth’s body and then make love Ray (Key Facts, 1). One fact about the novel The Lovely Bones is that the beginning of the book is famous for its intense descriptions on Suzie Salmon’s rape that she had to endure. It has been said from many people that The Lovely Bones is the most successful novel since Gone with the Wind (Spring, 1). The Lovely Bones was on the best-seller lists for several months in 2002 (Alice,
...d few such as Anna, Stella, and Alice who broke free of the poison, lived their lives as Sam Toms’ did who rooted the family. They as he did lied, cheated, manipuled, and kept secrets to try to live a happy life which in actuality their lives were anything but.
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.
...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.
The novel “Salvage the Bones” started with the bible verse “See now that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me; I will kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is there any can deliver out of my hand.” As the novel started with this verse, readers could expect to see a lot of painful experiences that involve life, death and painful events in the characters in the novel. The theme of loss and tragedy is one of the prominent themes that is being portrayed in this novel. The two characters that are affected badly by the theme of loss are Esch and Skeetah. Esch losing the love of her life: Manny, while Skeetah losing his precious dog, China. Through the loss and tragedy event, the readers could see how the characters develop and
He learns what it means to be a friend, to have a friend, to be alienated and in pain. All of these integral pieces help Oskar find out who he really is: a little boy who is misunderstood because people cannot fathom his curiosity, his intelligence, and the love for his dad. Another novel related to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This is the story of a teenage girl, who, after being raped and murdered, watches from her personal Heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her own death. These two books relate because both of the families lost someone who was very close to them. They are grieving and having a hard time facing the fact that their loved one is not coming back. The two authors beautifully executed the novels with their point-of-views, imagery, and tone, making the story hard to
Alice Sebold conveys a well constructed and easily relatable set of characters throughout the entire novel. The Lovely Bones is written in a context in which every character has their own ways of coping with the loss of a loved one, and every day situations. The main character, Susie Salmon, conveys...
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
At the end, Clare finally passes away due to the strains of keeping up with her
The characters in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones are faced with the difficult task of overcoming the loss of Susie, their daughter and sister. Jack, Abigail, Buckley, and Lindsey each deal with the loss differently. However, it is Susie who has the most difficulty accepting the loss of her own life. Several psychologists separate the grieving process into two main categories: intuitive and instrumental grievers. Intuitive grievers communicate their emotional distress and “experience, express, and adapt to grief on a very affective level” (Doka, par. 27). Instrumental grievers focus their attention towards an activity, whether it is into work or into a hobby, usually relating to the loss (Doka par. 28). Although each character deals with their grief differently, there is one common denominator: the reaction of one affects all.
Constance's family life is a major point of interest in the book and is really what the story revolves around. Coming from a broken family, with her dad leaving Constance, otherwise known as Clare with 5 other brothers and sisters and her mum. The Father was hardly around only to bring Christmas presents and food. Clare was abused by her mother everyday, terrible physical abuse was inflicted on the growing body of Clare, benign cancer of the breasts caused by constant punches and squeezing from her mother. Emotionally shut out and neglected by her mother, taunted and teased all the time by her mother and her new husband, frequently called UGLY and told she was not welcome and unwanted. Home life was so bad Clare took herself off to social services and asked to be put into a home but was refused, feeling helpless and life was not living she attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of bleach. "I felt sick, happy and sad. I was happy because tonight if the bleach worked I would die. No more Tomorrows. Hip, Hip hooray." This quote shows the extent of the abuse her mother used on Constance, her home life was unbearable. It is very sad to think that many children and teenagers are stuck in abusive families with no escape.