English 104 - Introduction to Narrative
10 Blog: The Lovely Bones
Why is it called lovely bones?
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Torri Parker
Susie’s horrific fate makes her very intriguing in terms of being nosey when it comes to everyone else’s business. When Ruth goes to share a very special moment with Lindsey, where Susie should have looked away, she continues to look in. “Can I get into bed with you?” Here Ruth...
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Posted by cparker on December 04, 2003 at 10:01 AM
Invading Privacy
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Ryan Hurd
Susie Salmon has her privacy completely disregarded by Mr. Harvey while in the ditch. Once Susie speaks as the narrator in Heaven she also invades people’s privacy. Susie explains that, her sister, Lindsey has lived in Susie’s shadow for her entire life, “when people looked at Lindsey, even my father...
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Posted by rhurd on December 04, 2003 at 09:52 AM
Susie's View from Heaven
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Liz Button
The ability of Susie as a narrator to circle throughout time lends her the capability to examine people and places more carefully than she did in life. This thereby gives her insight on to the effects herdeath has had on these things. For example, when Susie looks down on...
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Posted by ebutton on December 04, 2003 at 09:49 AM
Susie Watches
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Mike Stratton
Susie violates Lindsey’s and Samuels privacy when the two, loose their virginity together. The loss of virginity is a moment to be shared between two people, occurring in solitude, only to be shared with two the lovers. Susie however must watch her sister have sex because at the time of...
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Posted by mstratto on December 04, 2003 at 09:44 AM
Limted to Omniscient
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jannelle Richardson
Susie’s horrible death has transformed her into an omniscient narrator. Susie begins the novel with her death scene where she notices various items that seem out of place in the whole in the cornfield, “there was mirror on the shelf and a razor and shaving cream. I thought that was...
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Posted by jrichar2 on December 04, 2003 at 09:39 AM
Mom & Dad
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Europa Yang
The way Susie’s narration circles between the past and the present is an indicator of how she is dealing with understanding the changes taking place in a world from which she has been completely excluded. Intently observing from heaven, Susie especially notices how her parents’ marriage has deteriorated over time...
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Posted by eyang on December 04, 2003 at 09:32 AM
The "Mother-stranger"
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jeff Nolin
On page 42, Suzie moves from a focus on the present to a story about her first camera. With that camera, she took a picture of her mother and through that picture, she finally realized her mother was a person besides “mom”. The narration then shifts back to the present,...
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Posted by jnolin on December 04, 2003 at 09:18 AM
Susie’s Sense of Responsibility for her Own Death
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Ged Wieschhoff
In the beginning of The Lovely Bones, Susie consistently interjects her past dialogue with Mr. Harvey to reveal her present feelings of responsibility for her murder and disappointment at her naiveté. Susie first states, “’Don’t let me startle you,’ Mr. Harvey said...After I was dead I thought about how there...
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Posted by gwieschh on December 04, 2003 at 09:18 AM
Attachments
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Aki Makino
The transition between times, irrelevant for the dead, provided the reader with the reasons why Susie Salmon remained attached to Earth. One of the attachments was vengeance, her desire to get even with Mr. Harvey, “…what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living (20).” Because of him,...
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Posted by amakino on December 04, 2003 at 09:11 AM
Ruth's resurrection of Susie
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Meredeth Lammert
Susie has numerous gifted narrators for two reasons; first of all, when she was alive, she prided herself on being different and an intellectual, as were all of her mourners. Secondly, the reader is seeing all her mourners as different but equally fascinating and gifted people, who all in their...
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Posted by mlammert on December 04, 2003 at 08:55 AM
Susie Alone
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jeb Bobseine
After her death, Susie is able to look down and observe the people she knows, violating their privacy. “The odd thing about Earth was what we saw when we looked down” (36). When Susie dies she is inexperienced in many ways. She is fourteen years-old, and still maturing. She wants...
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Posted by jbobsein on December 04, 2003 at 08:42 AM
The Deepest Invasion of Privacy
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Alex Smith
Whether she is entirely aware of it or not, Suzie’s horrific fate shapes her narration by giving her insight into the minds and thoughts of everyone left on earth. While she would make us believe that she can only see these characters visually by “watching” from up above or from...
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Posted by asmith9 on December 04, 2003 at 08:41 AM
Lost innocence
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Monica Ruzicka
Susie’s rape and subsequent murder rob her of the innocence characteristic of any young girl. Still naďve and not yet willing to claim independence from her family, Susie dies with strong attachments to her parents and siblings. Her narration is voyeuristic as Susie watches her family members and friends...
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Posted by mruzicka on December 04, 2003 at 08:27 AM
Projection of Desires Onto Others
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Ryan Helminiak
Up in her heaven, Susie has acquired the ability to project her own feelings onto others still below. "I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth" (20). Susie's desires are often selfish, and are not necessarily...
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Posted by rhelmini on December 04, 2003 at 07:55 AM
Obsession with Sex or Search for Love?
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Katie Mitterling
At age fourteen, Susie Salmon's virginity, life, and privacy are brutally wrenched from her. By "innocently" luring her down into his hole, Mr. Harvey exposes Susie's childlike curiosity—a naďve vulnerability. "I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my...
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Posted by kmitterl on December 04, 2003 at 04:34 AM
Re-Turns
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Alex Krippner
Primarily, the circles in time that Susie’s narration seems to form seem to suggest the fact that being dead, she herself is no longer able to move forward in time. She can watch others move forward (and it is usually those whom she is watching that she reminisces about), but...
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Posted by kkrippne on December 04, 2003 at 03:10 AM
sexual healing
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jin-Sun Kim
Considering Susie's fate and the fact that she was killed by rape, she seems to be extremely interested in others’ sexual activities. From heaven, she can see almost everything, but only talks about certain things. She closely follows her sister, Lindsey’s relationship with her boyfriend, Sam. Susie remembers the first...
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Posted by jkim3 on December 04, 2003 at 03:01 AM
The Lonely Artist
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jennifer Bernstein
Ruth’s exceptional artistic ability, her skill to see the world with a subtle and sensitive eye, is a talent, but one that makes her more of an observer of action than a participant. Her intelligence leaves her an outsider, unwanted in school and unaccepted among peers. “She stood apart from...
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Posted by jbernste on December 04, 2003 at 02:54 AM
A Susie in a Bottle
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Chris Johnson
Susie’s father’s talent of building ships in bottles is a representation of his approach to raising his daughter. When Jack begins building the ship, it is still outside of the bottle, and he has the freedom and ability to shape it and create it - just as he was able...
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Posted by cjohnso2 on December 04, 2003 at 02:43 AM
Back to the present!
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Dro Joseney
The strategic purpose of Susie's narration is that of a detective. She pieces together the story of how she died and how her family copes with her death. Susie begins by introducing to the reader her normal life, where she then tells of what happens on a fateful night when...
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Posted by cjoseney on December 04, 2003 at 02:31 AM
Lowering the Sails: Death of a Talent
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Matthew Roy
In a conscious attempt to start moving forward with their lives after Susie’s death, the family decided to perform chores. Her father was assigned the “task of cleaning the upstairs guest room, which long ago had become his den” (p. 45). The den is where he had made and kept...
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Posted by mroy on December 04, 2003 at 02:08 AM
Susie's Ironic Obsession with Sex
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Nicole Colucci
Because Susie’s single sexual experience is so traumatic, one might expect that she would instinctively associate sex with pain, fear and sin. On the contrary, she seems to develop a peculiar obsession with the sexual attraction and experiences of her friends and family on Earth. When Samuel Heckler comes to...
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Posted by ncolucci on December 04, 2003 at 02:02 AM
Susie--the Onlooker, the Vilolater, the Obsessed
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Julie Calareso
Susie’s fate shapes her narration in the sense that she narrates the story with a special ability: the ability to see into the lives of all characters in the novel; she is able to see all of their actions and hear all of their words, even those actions and words...
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Posted by jcalares on December 04, 2003 at 01:46 AM
Susie's Guilt
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Kelsey Hughes
Susie loops us through the past and the present in a way where she herself is trying to find meaning and understanding. Her desires appear extremely clear as she jumps back in time to when she found her mother on the porch, and she explains, “’Ocean Eyes,’ my father caller...
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Posted by khughes2 on December 04, 2003 at 01:16 AM
The Perfect Physician
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jim Light
From relatives like Lindsey to friends and acquaintances such as Ruth, Susie’s mourners seem related through their possession of prominent gifts and talents. Outstanding among these is Ray Singh—the boy Susie grew fond of during the last weeks of her life. He was a man of “higher breeding”; he, “…saw...
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Posted by jlight on December 04, 2003 at 01:14 AM
shifting to protect
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Dan Yingst
Susie’s place in heaven gives her a natural detachment from the events that take place on the Earth. Even so she feels the need to shift backwards and forwards in time in order to cushion the impact of certain events upon her. Nowhere is this more obvious then during her...
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Posted by dyingst on December 04, 2003 at 01:11 AM
Susie's Severed Body, Narration, and Violation of Others Privacy
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Dan Herzberg
On page 15 of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones Susie Salmon meets her death after being raped in a cornfield. After Susie is violated, her aggressor, Mr. Harvey, grabs a knife, kills her, and proceeds to chop up her body. Immediately after Susie’s body is chopped up, so too...
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Posted by dherzber on December 04, 2003 at 01:03 AM
Susie and Sex
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Erica Michel
Despite the horrific rape scene at the beginning of the novel, Susie does not seem to have any fear of sex itself. She always seems fascinated by kissing or sex scenes in the novel, and she always describes them as wonderful. For example, when Lindsey first kisses Samuel Heckler,...
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Posted by emichel on December 04, 2003 at 12:50 AM
Mr. Harvey's Childhood
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Meghan Gillis
Susie’s virginity and youth was violated by Mr. Harvey. Susie is able to “see all the way back to Mr. Harvey in his mother’s arms” (96). The narration allows us to learn of Mr. Harvey’s childhood. By searching into Mr. Harvey’s past she learns that “he would begin to...
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Posted by mgillis on December 04, 2003 at 12:19 AM
Juxtaposition of Good and Bad
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Eli Maitland
Susie seems to juxtapose certain positive parts of her narrative along with some shockingly negative parts. This serves to futher emphasize the horrific nature of the negative, just for added affect. For example, on page 14, when retelling the story of her rape, she switches back and forth from rather...
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Posted by emaitlan on December 04, 2003 at 12:18 AM
exorcism
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Kendall Brown
Much as a rape can affect the subsequent life of a living person, Susie’s sexual assault shapes the way that she views the lives of the people that she left behind on earth. As a fourteen year old girl, the extent of Susie’s sexual experience was the innocent kiss that...
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Posted by kbrown2 on December 03, 2003 at 11:51 PM
Healthy Hormones
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Greg Pearson
Susie’s life is abruptly cut short at the age of fourteen when she is brutally raped and murdered by her neighbor. This event is shocking, violent, and deeply disturbing. And yet this traumatic experience, which is also a sexual experience, however one sided, does not seem to have instilled the...
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Posted by gpearson on December 03, 2003 at 11:44 PM
Susie's sexual frustration
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Alix Roy
Given the brutal manner in which Susie’s life was taken, it is surprising to see her purposely revisiting the act that was so harshly performed on her moments before her death. Her obsession with sex is exhibited throughout the novel by Susie’s frequent descriptions of her friends and family’s...
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Posted by aroy on December 03, 2003 at 11:43 PM
Susie & Sex-what is she thinking?
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Emily Hubbard
Susie, oddly enough, seems to get her most excited moments-moments where she feels alive- through incindences that involve sex. Particularly, Susie enjoys moments when her sister, Lindsay, and Samuel are kissing. When she sees Samuel and lindsay kissing at one point she says, “Unchaperoned,and with the heat of the...
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Posted by ehubbard on December 03, 2003 at 10:27 PM
Vicarious Voyeurism
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Frank Chi
Susie’s violent departure from Earth due to sexual brutality seems to have permanently instilled the cultural influences of sex. Since her life was taken because of an act of sexual brutality, her fascination with this expression of human instinct and constant voyeurisms on Lindsey display a yearning to reconnect with...
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Posted by fchi on December 03, 2003 at 10:21 PM
Suzie's Mom
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Taneisha Wilson
Suzie’s narrative strategy of going back and forth in time has to do with the fact that she died so young. Had Suzie died a little older, looking back on her life would be a lot more retrospective, but because she is so young when she looks back she...
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Posted by twilson on December 03, 2003 at 09:46 PM
In Heaven but not Dead
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Britta Bene
One of the most surprising effects of Susie’s horrible rape and murder is that desire and lust seem to have been (re)awakened in her. Her “invasion” of Lindsay and Samuel’s sex scene is especially interesting when we consider her closing remarks, “at fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into...
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Posted by bbene on December 03, 2003 at 09:42 PM
One Violation Deserves Another
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Molly McCarter
Just as Susie’s departure from life was a violation of privacy, so is her way back into the life of the living. She was violated sexually – and this violation was her first, and last taste of real sexuality. It is particularly interesting, then, to observe the way she witnesses...
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Posted by mmccarte on December 03, 2003 at 09:18 PM
Lessons in Heaven
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Niki Alvarez
One of the more surprising ways that Susie’s fate shapes her narration is in the way of how she focuses on relationships and sex in the lives of the people she loves. Susie’s horrible rape would make one think that in her heaven there would be no mention of sex,...
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Posted by nalvarez on December 03, 2003 at 08:32 PM
Mr. Harvey as a Man?
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Drew Fulton
Susie’s narration takes you into the mind of many of the characters in the novel. One of the most disturbing yet also most human characters in the novel is Susie’s murderer, Mr. Harvey. Susie enters into his mind and reads his thoughts on a number of occasions and the more...
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Posted by afulton on December 03, 2003 at 07:53 PM
In the Walls of Sex
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Kira Chappelle
Susie’s narration fixates on several relationships between men and women. One relationship that Susie is particularly fascinated with is the developing relationship between Lindsey and Samuel. When Samuel and Lindsey first kiss Susie says, “it was glorious. I was almost alive again” (71). Lindsey’s first kiss is innocent and sweet,...
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Posted by kchappel on December 03, 2003 at 07:29 PM
Life through Lindsey
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Merrie Railsback
Considering the brutal rape that occurred in conjunction with her murder, one might assume that Susie would block the idea of sex out of her consciousness. Susie is, however, still a fourteen year old girl on the verge of adolescence. As a result of her death, Susie's experiences with love...
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Posted by mrailsba on December 03, 2003 at 07:17 PM
Ocean Eyes
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Andrew Morrison
In chapter three Susie encounters Franny while returning home, and she asks Susie why she is shivering. Susie responds that she “can’t help thinking of her mother.” (p. 41) As Franny goes on her way, Susie can’t help but wish that she would hold her. However, Susie lets her leave,...
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Posted by amorriso on December 03, 2003 at 05:27 PM
Looping Through Time
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Tasha Graff
Susie defines herself as curious, and she wants answers, but she also wants a heaven where she “would feel only joy” (120). “‘If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else, stop investigating the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering what everyone left on Earth...
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Posted by tgraff on December 03, 2003 at 03:55 PM
Narrative Circles That Parallel an Internal Struggle
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Sophie Wiss
As an omniscient narrator, Susie has the ability to draw our attention back and forth between heaven and earth, past and present, as she chooses. While her father lies in a hospital bed, Susie circles back and forth through time, exemplifying her mother’s internal struggle as she faces a...
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Posted by swiss on December 03, 2003 at 03:39 PM
Susie's use of the past to accept and understand the present
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Emily Sheffield
After witnessing her mother’s first adulterous act (kissing Len ), Susie takes the reader back several years to her early memories of her mother, bathing her and her sister. Susie reflects on the gentle, attentive woman she knew, the caring mother and the devoted wife. However, Susie is now able...
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Posted by esheffie on December 03, 2003 at 01:48 PM
Ruth & Abigail: Characters United in Isolation
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Alex Paul
In Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, Susie Salmon’s narration frequently transitions between descriptions of the present and memories of the past. A perfect example of this trend arises in chapter three: Susie—while in Heaven—observes the actions of Ruth Connors, then abruptly flashes back to the morning of her eleventh birthday...
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Posted by apaul on December 03, 2003 at 12:50 AM
Peeping Susie
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jason Lewis
“I had been kissed once by someone I like” (13). When George Harvey committed the heinous act of rape and murder, he not only robbed Susie Salmon of her innocence and her life, he also deprived a fourteen-year-old of a lifetime of experiences, including sexual ones. Susie’s inexperience as a...
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Posted by jlewis2 on December 02, 2003 at 10:26 PM
Inspiration from Death
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Eric Davich
Although Susie is dead, her mind-state in heaven is still of a high-school aged girl. She is still concerned with high-school social life and social status and wants to live that experience. When Susie “leaves earth” after her death, the last person she touches is a girl named Ruth....
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Posted by edavich on December 02, 2003 at 09:42 PM
Susie's Intentions for "Violating" the Privacy of Thoughts
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Jade Dunn
Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see. (29) Although Susie Salmon suffers a gruesome death, her discharge from...
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Posted by jdunn2 on December 02, 2003 at 02:13 PM