The Lovely Bones
When someone you love dies, how do you even think about moving on; because moving on means
accepting and accepting means believing that it really happened. This is an idea the is strongly portrayed in the book The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The book shows the aftermath of a 14 year old girl who is brutally raped and murdered. But, this book is unique, because it is told by the girl who was killed, Susie. The way the the book is written allows the reader to see how all the characters dealt with Susie's death, and how Susie had to watch everyone she loved, move on. Traumatic events change a family, but this book really shows that everyone heals, but not always in the same way they were broken. The characters in the book were able to change and grow after accepting what had happened, and trying to move forward
The person who was actually the most affected by Susie's death, was the person who could move on the easiest. Susie's brother Buckley was barely old enough to remember what had happened with Susie, but it was always around him, lurking in the shadows. Buckley was 4 or 5 when his parents decided to tell him that Susie was never coming home again; "'Susie is dead,' unable to make it fit in the rules of any game, 'do you know what that means?'" This was said on page 69 of the Lovely Bones after Susie's death. Susie's death allowed Buckley to grow up in a way that would have never been possible, Buckley let go of Susie by helping his father let go, and becoming more mature. "At twelve my brother had become serious and considerate. Even if he didn't pay for the food or cook the meals, he managed the house." Moving on and helping everyone else move on was the way that Buckley mature beyond his years and become his own person.
The mother also changed drastically from finding out about Susie, to being able to accept the reality. "He would not really look at her for the rest of the day, not really look into her and see the woman her had known her to be before the day they had taken the news of my death." The mother changed, she felt helpless like there was nothing that could happen that would lift the weight she had on her chest. So she cheated. She cheated on her husband and her family, and then she left. But as horrible as that sounds now, she needed to leave, and be a person outside of a mother. She was able to be her own persona and accept what happened. When she came home she remembered, but was not pained, she was glad she remembered and happy she still had a family to come home to. " She began to think of the rooms in our house and the hours that she had worked so hard to forget spent inside them. Like fruit put up in jars and forgotten about, the sweetness seemed even more distilled as she returned."
It was a necessity that all the characters found some way to deal with the tragedy. It allowed them all to grow as people outside of the family with the murdered daughter. But what makes this book even more heartbreaking is that Susie watches the people she loves move on and that she hopes they never forget her. By the end Susie realizes that she will always be apart of the people she left, whether its in memory or in her sister Lindsey's case, the name of a child. Moving on is in the same part of life that death in, its not easy, but this book shows that life cannot continue to make you happy until one does move on.
