Personal Study Essay

“The Lovely Bones”

By

Alice Sebold

Question :

Choose a novel with an interesting or unusual narrative voice. Explain the narrative voice and how it affects the readers understanding of the novel.

Plan

Para 1 – Introduction. – Title, Author, theme.

  • It concerns….
  • Narrative voice
  • Intention

Para 2 – Brief Summary – Weeks following death…

  • School friends
  • Family (brother…marriage.)

Para 3 – Setting – Unfolds from heaven…holds Susie back…

  • Easier to understand characters
  • Knows people better – as does reader
  • How Susie relates

Para 4 -

“The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold is a novel about growing older and wiser and dealing with loss. It concerns an adolescent girl who is raped and murdered and has to watch her family get over her death while she is in heaven. I intend to explore how the author uses techniques to involve me in the central character’s metaphorical journey to acceptance of her fate.

In the weeks that follow her death, Susie watches Earth and how it continues without her -her school friends swapping stories about her disappearance, her family holding out hope that she'll be found, her killer trying to cover his tracks. As months pass without leads, Susie sees her parents' marriage being ruined by loss, her sister hardening herself in an attempt to cope, and her younger brother attempting to understand the meaning of the word gone.

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The Lovely Bones unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie can see her family and friends coping with her disappearance and eventually her death, as well as seeing her shameless murderer getting away with the crimes he committed and the unhappy detective working on her case. Sebold has made heaven a place that everybody has his or her own adaptation of.  Susie's bears a resemblance to the athletic fields and scenery of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers… We never had to go inside except for ...

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