The Lovely Bones Symbolism

The Lovely Bones

In Alice Sebold’s moving novel The Lovely Bones, Sebold explores various elements of humanity and the emotions that accompany it by crafting a story that readers can instantly connect with. She is unforgiving with the degree of how blunt and straightforward her tale starts out, as the main character Suzie Salmon is brutally raped and murdered within the very first chapter. The rest of the book examines her family and friends and how they all cope with this loss; this is all from the perspective of Suzie herself, who resides in a heaven-like state of being for the majority of the plot. Sebold conveys the idea that horrid, repulsive choices and actions can send ripples down the lives and futures of a wide range of people,
The narrative of Suzie’s view of her family after her death is filled with slight, miniscule associations that tend to lead the reader to believe that everything is connected and everything happened for a reason. For example, when Suzie first goes missing, the family’s porch light is left on so she can find her way home. This is more of an emotional safety net for her family than to actually help her home. If the light is still on, they can still aimlessly and hopelessly believe that she could still be out there and be alive. It is turned off when Suzie’s father ventures outside to try and capture his daughter’s killer, signifying that the prosecution of him would provide closure for him and his family. Readers feel compelled to empathize with this, mainly for the fact that most people have been in denial about something emotionally taxing in their lives that they refuse to accept, and the difficulty of finally letting go and accepting fate and reality for what it is. Secondly, Suzie’s mother’s choice of books symbolizes where in her life she is and how she feels about life itself. When she was young, she read college books about literature and philosophy. Yet once she had children, she turned to cooking and gardening books. After Suzie’s death, she looses touch with her family, dusts off the covers of those college books, and once again treats herself to intellectual stimulation. She is free and independent when she reads her college books, and when she does it after her daughter’s death, she reads because of the distance she creates between her and her husband and children. She wants to be young again, away from the feelings of sadness and loneliness she associates with her family, and she has an affair and leaves her family shortly thereafter. Many audience members can identify with this because they want to be young and independent as well. People