Ella Kindt

Mrs. Elizabeth Boyd

English 102

10 May 2021

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: Literary Analysis

Alice Sebold’s novel, The Lovely Bones (2002), illustrates a grieving family’s response to

the loss of a child and the differing forms of grief each member uses to cope with this tragedy.

She uses the perspective of the dead to fully analyze the Salmon family’s grief without bias or

judgment from living characters, enforcing the fact that grief looks different on every individual.

Sebold’s purpose is to enforce the idea that no matter how one grieves, a traumatic event must be

acknowledged in order to heal and grow. Sebold’s artfully crafted novel weaves complex themes

of hope and love with those of grief and coping, resulting in a beautifully told story of life and

death.

Susie Salmon is 14 years old when she is raped and murdered in a cornfield behind her

suburban house. The police look for weeks, which turns into months, which slowly trickle into

years, and still the only evidence of Susie's body is her left elbow. Susie remembers this day

vividly, and she recounts her death often from her place in heaven, looking down on her living

family and narrating their story. She watches from her place in the afterlife as her family is

ripped apart by the hands of grief: her mother running, her father languishing, and her sister

shutting grief out completely. As the years go by since Susie’s death, each character tries to

achieve a new normal, including Susie herself. She realizes that she must leave her life on earth

behind to ever be fully immersed in the wonders of her afterlife. Similarly, her family slowly

concludes that they must move past Susie’s murder to enter the next phase of their lives: healing.
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The primary theme of this novel is related to death and loss, specifically the fact that

happiness can be born of tragedy, but only if one allows themselves to feel the pain and grow

because of it. This theme can be charted by two prominent characters in the novel: Susie's

parents, Jack and Abigail Salmon. These two characters present interesting comparative and

contrasting grieving patterns, which leads to turmoil in their marriage after Susie’s death. Sebold

uses Jack’s reactions to others, his inner thoughts, and his appearance to other characters to

solidify the realistic presentation of his grieving process and, therefore, reveal the theme.

Arguably the most heartfelt relationship presented in The Lovely Bones is that of Susie and

her father, as Sebold demonstrates repeatedly in the text. Mr. Salmon is devastated after Susie’s

murder, and his initial emotional response is to isolate himself from his remaining family. After

the news of Susie's death, “[Jack] was too devastated to reach out to my mother sitting on the

carpet or my sister’s hardened form nearby. He could not let them see him” (Sebold 29) Jack’s

early response to grief is that of distancing and removing himself from his family, perhaps for

fear of appearing fragile in the public eye.

As the story progresses, Jack begins to resist the isolation of grief and begins to rely on his

family, their strength allowing him to endure the pain of loss. Although his shows of affection

are innocent, he often cannot understand how his family might need space. In a conversation

with his daughter, Lindsey, she says:

“‘I want to be alone, [i]sn’t that obvious?’

‘I’m here if you need me,’ he said.

‘Look, Dad, …I’m handling this alone.’…[H]e stood there for a second and then

retreated. ‘I understand,’ he said first, although he didn’t” (Sebold 158). In this stage of Jack’s

grief, he needs to share his feelings, and the outlet he deems necessary is nonexistent. Only
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toward the end of the novel is Jack willing to accept Susie’s passing and not hide from his

emotions. For his wife, Abigail, Susie’s death elicits a juxtaposed emotional response to the loss

of her daughter.

Susie's death affects several aspects of Abigail's life, which eventually tears her apart

from the rest of her family. Her reaction skips the emotional response that her husband shows

later on, and she lingers in self-isolation. “She becomes more mysterious and secretive…, [S]he

[even] becomes unfaithful and [commits] adultery. Abigail sees this action as the easiest way to

forget Susie's death” and escape her grief for as long as possible (Hidayat 7). Abigail's desperate

escapism reaches its peak when she moves to California to erase her old life, leaving her husband

alone to parent two children while dealing with the death of the third. Only when she reunites

with her living children and husband does she fully realize how to accept her child’s death.

Together, Jack and Abigail both come to terms with Susie’s passing. “Last night it [was] my

father who finally said it: ‘She's never coming home.’ A clear and easy piece of truth that

everyone who had ever known me had accepted. But he needed to say it, and she needed to hear

him say it" (Sebold 285). After admitting Susie’s death, their relationship begins to heal, and

Abigail refuses to run from her grief any longer.

Once the Salmon’s came to terms with their loss, they began to grow and develop as

characters, moving toward happiness. Susie narrates that her “parents gave [her] leftover

possession to the Good Will… [t]hey kept sharing when they felt [her]. Being together, thinking

and talking about the dead, became a perfectly normal part of their life (Sebold 321). The entire

family moves in the direction of a new normal. Toward the end of the novel, the reader catches a

glimpse of the family years after Susie’s death. While watching, Susie realizes that these

moments are “the lovely bones that had grown around [her] absence: the
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connections—sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent—that

happened after [she] was gone…. The events that [her] death wrought were merely the bones of

a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future” (Sebold 320). The

family forges a new life, not by forgetting Susie, but by acknowledging her absence and

remembering the person she once was.

Sebold creates a horrifying and sadly realistic world in her novel The Lovely Bones,

immersing the reader into a journey of love and loss. Throughout the novel, she uses the

character's grief patterns to insinuate the main theme: happiness can be born of tragedy, but only

if one accepts the pain of loss and allows for new growth. Her story telling, interesting

perspectives, and artfully written work delivers a compelling narrative with even more powerful

themes. Sebold approaches grief not as an emotion to be conquered, but as a natural phenomenon

in life’s forward motion.

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Works Cited

Arvelin, Caroline. “Men Don’t Cry but Women Do: Grieving Fathers and Escaping Mothers in

Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist and Ian

McEwan’s The Child in Time.” 2011. Lund University, Undergraduate essay.

Hidayat, Oksa. “Jack Salmon's Stages of Grief in Accepting Susie's Death as Seen in Alice

Sebold's The Lovely Bones.” 2018. Sanata Dharma University.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. Vol. 20010550622, Little, Brown and Company, 2002.

“Tragedy, Grief, Alienation, and Isolation Theme Analysis.” LitCharts,

www.litcharts.com/lit/the-lovely-bones/themes/tragedy-grief-alienation-and-isolation.