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.
...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.
Everybody in life will go through a moment of grief, but the way you will grieve can be different than the way other people grieve. In the Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, the Salmon family has to grieve the death of Susie Salmon, a daughter and a sister. There is no right way to grieve the loss of someone close to you, but there are healthy ways to grieve. For example, the father handles it the best by trying to bring his family closer. The father also puts all his energy into finding the murderer and making sure he will be punished.
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.
Jack Salmon, Susie’s father, is most vocal about his sorrow for losing his daughter. However, his initial reaction was much different. Upon hearing that Susie’s ski hat had been found, he immediately retreats upstairs because “he [is] too devastated to reach out to [Abigail] sitting on the carpet…he could not let [her] see him” (Sebold 32). Jack retreats initially because he did not know what to do or say to console his family and he did not want them to see him upset. This first reaction, although it is small, is the first indicator of the marital problems to come. After recovering from the initial shock, Jack decides that he must bring justice for his daughter’s sake and allows this goal to completely engulf his life. He is both an intuitive and instrumental griever, experiencing outbursts of uncontrolled emotions then channeling that emotion into capturing the killer. He focuses his efforts in such an e...
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
The author manages to combine love with loss, laughter with suffering, and adolescence with maturing essence so the readers are left with the overall effect of the death and the loss, however comforted with the compassion, and coming of age throughout the end of the novel. Another success to The Lovely Bones' style is how the stories of multiple characters correlate with one another as well as their responses to Susie's passing at such a young age. In accordance with the multiple viewpoints of the various perspectives, Susie stands out by far. Readers witness first hand the events Susie's family must endure, and cope with as her death is a deeply moving and overwhelming element to the story. The viewpoint is exceptionally remarkable since the narrator throughout the entire story is a main character, however is also deceased.
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards, and Alice Seabold’s The Lovely Bones, both similarly explore the ways in which grief influences and ultimately structures the lives of their central characters. Although the authors utilise vastly disparate situations, Edwards and Seabold both depict the development of their families in response to the demise of a relative. Through the progressive transformation of their protagonists, the major themes are exposed to reveal how their struggle inflicts their future and the surrounding characters. The role of grief is established to determine how individuals seek closure through a variety of demeanours, in that the central couples exhibit dishonesties and cheating as a consequence of their loss. A
She enjoys watching her family in the years following her death and one night, shortly after the confirmation of her death, Susie sees Lindsey creep into her room and find the photo of Abigail that she had hidden from the rest of the world. Similar to Susie, Lindsey is awestruck by her mother’s alternate persona, so much so that the photograph evokes a physical reaction. Susie observes, “A deep breath rushed out of her, and she sat down on the floor, her mouth still open and her hand still holding the picture” (Sebold 44). Although telling, Lindsey's attitude towards the photograph is not unprecedented, it is Jack Salmon’s reaction to the photograph that reveals the most. After Abigail leaves the family, Jack finds himself staring at the photos of her from the morning of Susie’s eleventh birthday. Slowly but surely, he falls back in love with her. Yet, as he sees the mask Abigail develops throughout the photos, he cannot help but think, “Did I do that to you?” (240). Instead of drowning in rage, Jack becomes engulfed in guilt, reaffirming his character as selfless, loving and painstakingly loyal. These character traits aid the reader in comprehending why he can love Abigail again and ultimately accept Susie’s
Her father would shout and scream at her mother verbally abusing her and sometimes physically abusing her. All this pain eventually caused her mother to do the same as her father which was to use alcohol to alleviate the pain. Although alcohol can be a temporary emotional bandage it still did not resolve the core issues within the household. Dawn, afraid, still lived through the same emotions every day, fear and anxiety. She did not know what she was coming home to, a sober normal family or a drunk and dysfunctional
At the end, Clare finally passes away due to the strains of keeping up with her
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.
...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.