The Lovely Bones: A lesson on fear? Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones leaves the reader with a sense of unease because the theme of fear is explored. The novel centers around 14 year old Susie Salmon, who’s murder occurs early on in the novel while the rest shows her dwelling in an in-between dimension. The fears included in this novel come from real life fears and experiences like: the fear of strangers, the fear of suddenly losing a loved one and the fear of the unknown. These fears play a big part in how the reader feels about the book.
In The Lovely Bones, readers connect with the novel through the fear of strangers. Immediately, Susie explains that this fear likely originated when the police started putting the photos of missing girls
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Susie then explains that she was raped and killed by her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. She knew not to talk to strangers, but what she did not know is that child abduction by strangers is rare; 90 percent of the harm done to children is by someone they already know (Northern Michigan Alliance for Children). This heightens the fear even more because not only do you need to be careful around strangers, but also around people you know. Alice Sebold had an experience similar to Susie Salmon when she was 18; while walking home to her dorm one night she was attacked and raped by a stranger. She speaks about it more in detail in her memoir Lucky: “In the tunnel where I was raped, …a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, …show more content…
This fear can be seen in this novel through the idea of what comes after death. Franny, Susie’s guide while she’s in the in-between, is trying to help her find Heaven, but Susie is unsure about what to do or where she belongs: “‘When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things,’ Franny said. ‘What about the dead?’ I asked. ‘Where do we go?’” (145). Susie is asking questions that are likely floating around in a lot of people's heads; unanswered questions that cause fear. Susie talks about how “heaven” is different for everyone. However this seems unrealistic and too ideal. Nearing the end of the novel everything suddenly works out, making the situation seem better than it really is:
These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections… that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life