Alice Sebold takes her readers on a vivid remarkable journey into a life scarring moment of her past. Because Sebold is the author and the victim, there are moments in the novel which depict gruesome details of her rape. In spring of 1981, Sebold was walking home from a class on campus at her college in the night. As she traveled down the path in the park, leading to her dorm, she was then grabbed and held at knife point by an unknown man. The man demanded her to follow him into a dark tunnel under the bridge in the park. She begged him not to rape her and gave him her wallet for him to leave her alone. He however did not care and brutally abused, urinated on, and raped her, also taking her virginity. She walked back from the campus, with bloody …show more content…
Helpless, Alice ran to the security guard at the front desk, requesting him to call the police. The police came and asked Alice a series of questions relating to the rape. She was then taken to the precinct, where her best friend, Mary Alice waited anxiously for her arrival. The doctors took proper precautions and took a rape-kit to gather all the evidence required to convict the rapist. . The police described Alice as “lucky” because a similar incident happened last year to a girl; however, she was murdered. After giving a description to the detectives, they brought Alice to a room where five similar men stood in a lineup. However, because the rapist had a similar looking friend in the lineup, Alice failed to identify her attacker. Losing all hope for finding her rapist, Alice went home to Pennsylvania after the attack for the summer before returning to campus. There, she was walking down the sidewalk and saw her rapist once again. He said a couple words and smirked at her. Alice called the police once more and told them of her frightening encounter. Eventually, the correct man was tried and convicted for her rape. The trial was the hardest on her; she had to testify against her rapist and reminisce on the whole life-scarring