Symbols In The Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold

Authors use symbolism to make a piece of literature more interesting, adding dimensions to it, with the result of making it a richer work. The Lovely Bones is about a girl named Susie Salmon who one day takes a shortcut through the corn maze to get home. In the corn maze, she met her neighbor Mr.Harvey, who showed her a underground shelter that he built. He lured her into into it and brutally raped and murdered her. The story goes on depicting Susie’s family and how they coped with Susie’s death. In the book, The Lovely Bones, the author, Alice Sebold, has many important symbols throughout the book that demonstrate the themes separation, such as the snow globe, the Monopoly game and the ship bottles. One important symbol in The Lovely Bones is the snow globe and how it

In the book, before Susie’s death, Jack and Susie would build ship bottles together. This was their special thing that they would do together. After Susie’s death, Jack became crazy grief and smashed all the ship bottles. In the book, he does this, “Then there was the one that had burst into flames in the week before my death. He smashed that one first” (Sebold 46). Jack choose to smash the one that was closes to Susie’s death. It reminded him the most of Susie. After breaking the ship bottles, Jack sees Susie, “The bottles, all of them, lay broken on the floor, the sails and boat bodies strewn among them. He stood in the wreckage. It was then that, without knowing how, I revealed myself. In every piece of glass, in every shard and sliver, I cast my face.” (Sebold #). Susie is desperate to try and comfort her father and accidentally revealed herself to him. This shows that the ship bottles really did have a connection between Susie and her father. This symbol also represents the theme separation because the ship bottles remind Jack on how Susie and him can never be together