The Lovely Bones

• Includes the deceased Susie to give us a fresh look on the topic of grief and show the fine line between the living and the dead.
• Highlights the growing awareness of domestic, sexual and teen violence in American society of this time.
• Shares the concern of suburbanisation of 1970's America. (Salmon family and Mr Harvey share same housing layout.)
• The lovely bones are the cement that binds the Salmon family together and allow her to accept her death to go to wide wide heaven.
• The description of heaven has no particular religious significance (it applies universally, giving voices to all victims).
• Susie's break throughs show her desperation to reunite with Earth and her family highlighting how she was taken to early by Harvey.
• Susie is able to metaphorically mature and come of age and then physically comes to age through the possession, Sebold does this to give a voice to Susie and allow victims to take back what they lost.
• Susie's death causes a loss of innocence and a destruction of the false sense of security in the community.
• Set in a small town near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• The cornfield is used to represent the wrong turn (the wrong turn Susie takes to her death) but Ruth and Ray leave it in a more positive light through the memorial.
• The sinkhole may represent the abyss of emotions the Salmon family endure in order to accept Susie's death (stages of grief).
• The possession: Ruth desires to understand afterlife and the dead and Susie desires to return to earth and longs to kiss Ray once more. This is a subversion of the horror genre as the possession is consensual.
• A salmon's mission in life is to swim upstream against the odds to lay its eggs. Susie goes against the flow and the norms, accepting her death and allowing her to move on.