Jenice+Lee's+Summer+Reading

=**Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold** = = = Jenice Lee  **Book Choices 1. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster 2. Selected stories from The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe 3. Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold- approved** 


 * Heaven**

The setting of weather is used widely among writers to create certain mood and atmosphere that they want to illuminate. According to //How to Read Literature Like a Professor// by Thomas Foster, rain cleanses off one’s stained nature, while it also creates mud and therefore more stained than before. He also implied that snow is clean, inhospitable, and playful, while it can also mean filthiness and suffocation due to dirt. Both rain and snow feature in the novel //Lovely Bones//, written by Alice Sebold, which creates the whole setting of Susie’s murder.
 * Essay #1 It’s more than just rain or snow**

When Susie Salmon was murdered on December 6th, 1973, it was snowing. She encounters Mr. Harvey and naively follows him to a little hiding place he built underground. In this context, the snow relates to inhospitality and filthiness because of Harvey’s wanton behavior. When the time elapses, snow becomes useless and untouchable because it melts down and mixes with dirt. Thus, the snow foreshadowed the tragedy that Susie faced by her curiosity.

After developing the main setting of the novel, Sebold creates another mood. When Susie’s father, Jack Salmon, receives a phone call from Detective Len about the discovery of Susie’s body part, it starts to rain outside. Her father hopes that she is still "out there somewhere, in the rain... dry... and warm" (Sebold 23). The rain, in this case, works as an atmospheric. Because rain creates more mysterious, murkier, more isolating than any other weather conditions, Jack becomes more nervous, creating more tension to the plot.

Sebold’s implication of weather in Lovely Bones strengthened the plot by creating moodier and murkier tension between the protagonist and the antagonist. The rain and snow also foreshadowed future events because of its negative connotations in the text. As Foster has explained in his book, it’s never just rain. It contains much deeper meaning to it and Sebold uses it as a tool to assure the readers a firm grasp on the plot.

For a long time, ghosts and vampire stories have been haunting the readers. Even though it is spiritual and nonexistent, it still gives goose bumps. But as Thomas Foster have wrote in his book, //How to read Literature Like a Professor//, the ghost stories isn’t merely about the ghosts, itself. The ghosts and vampires have to do things beyond themselves. However, in //Lovely Bones// by Alice Sebold, the victim appears as a dead soul, with deeper connotations and meanings, rather than ghosts that gives out ominous features.
 * Essay #2 Nice to Eat You**

Mr. Harvey, a serial killer, murders Susie, a young, fourteen-year-old girl. She, then, goes to Heaven and observes the Earth. With her strong desire to go back to Earth, she touches her fellow classmate, Ruth Connor, on her way to Heaven. Ruth, then, starts to see "a pale running ghost coming toward" her in her dreams and gets obsessed about Susie’s death without knowing why (Sebold 41). Here, Susie even controls Ruth’s thoughts and gives her clues to her own death.

When Jack, Susie’s father, got upset with the loss of his daughter, he throws away all of the memories he have spent with his little girl. Then, "without knowing how, I revealed myself. In every piece of glass, in every piece of shard and silver, I cast my face" (53). By this, he somehow feels more connected with Susie by her presence. These cautious appearances of Susie not only assure that she is out there somewhere, but also alleviate their pain through her presence. Just like the ghosts of Hamlet’s father, Susie is not there simply to haunt Ruth or Jack; she’s there to point out something that they haven’t found yet in the investigation.

A soul can merely be illustrated as a monstrous ghost or vampire. In general, unlike a naïve, wandering soul, ghost and vampires have more sinister, eerie connotations, which gives the purpose for its presence. However, both have common factors, including that it is nonexistent, contains deeper messages, and points out the corrupted or false facts, that creates a similar bond between the two.

In literature, violence is not simply just a punch. It becomes a metaphor for certain themes or symbols of the novel. According to //How to Read Literature Like a Professor// by Thomas Foster, there are two categories of violence in literature: the specific injury and the narrative violence. //Lovely Bones// by Alice Sebold, falls into the category of specific injury but also illuminates something beyond the surface about the specific violence.
 * Essay #3 Concerning Violence**

The actual murder of Susie Salmon by Mr. Harvey initiates the authors’ purpose of the book. "I thought it was the worst thing in the world to be lying flat on my back with a sweating man on top of me" (Sebold 13). This quote implies that Harvey's actions were in a hurry due to surrounding settings and that Susie is an innocent, young victim. Since he is a serial killer, the injuries and violence he has committed becomes countless and prosaic to him. However, there is always a reason for a character to emerge from the book – "make action happen, cause or end plot complications, put other characters under stress. In the case of Lovely Bones, it works to cause plot complications and put other characters under stress" (Foster 90).

First of all, it causes plot complications because the death of Susie creates a whole new atmosphere on the people around her. As she goes up to Heaven and observes her families and friends, she gives out hints and clues about the detail of the murder, which helps her father to be more engaged in the investigation. Second of all, Susie’s death also puts the surrounding characters under trauma. Her parents become paranoid, her little sister mourns with grief every night, her classmate, Ruth, gets obsessed with the murder, and her love, Ray, also mourns and even becomes a suspect, when he has an airtight alibi.

From the reader’s point of view, the reason for violence may vary per person due to different perspectives. However, the author’s internal message through the violence is visible. Just like Foster says, “violence is everywhere in literature” (96). Without it, Sebold may have lost her initiative and motif for her novel.

Everything has a reason or a purpose for its existence. Even in novels, characters are set in certain positions or situations because they have specific reasons to appear. Just like Thomas Foster implies in his book, //How to Read Literature Like a Professor//, if one is blind, then one is "able to see things in the spirit and divine world and see the truth of what's actually happened" (201). Thus, in //Lovely Bones// by Alice Sebold, where one is in Heaven, it means that one can do anything was one desires.
 * Essay #4 Heaven for a reason**

The novel starts with the murder of a young girl named Susie Salmon. Unlike any other books with long introductory chapters or paragraph, Sebolds attracts us right into the murder scene from the beginning chapter. She even wrote who the murder is and the book is about giving out clues about the murder by observing from Heaven. But why? Foster says “if you want your audience to know something important about your character, introduce it early, before you need it” (205). This is clearly applied in Lovely Bones because most of the settings and characters are introduced in first few chapters. Even though all the answers are given that the murderer is Harvey, Lindsey, Susie’s sister, doesn’t have enough evidence for him to be guilty. Thus, Susie helps her family to closely engage with the investigation, observing every detail of Harvey from above. She is in Heaven for a reason.

On the one hand, another reason for her existence in Heaven is because of her love, Ray Singh. In later chapters, she somehow transforms into Ruth’s body saying that she “had give been given a gift” (Sebold 343). Susie’s desires are expressed directly to the readers because it was what she “wanted for so long” (343). After making love with Ray, she writes, “leaving Earth again was easier than coming back had been” (353). After all, Susie was also a high school student, who was in love with a boy she liked. If she was in Heaven for another reason other than giving out clues, it is because she wanted to be with Ray and observe his daily details without any interference.

Symbolism in literature contains various different meanings followed by various different forms. It can be a word, action, or even a mythical idea that floats around a character’s thought. According to //How to Read Literature Like a Professor// by Thomas Foster, individual history affects one’s understanding of the symbol presented in the novel. In the novel //Lovely Bones// by Alice Sebold, I found a deeper meaning with the collection of charm bracelets, collected by Mr. Harvey, the murderer.
 * Essay #5 Is that a Symbol?**

In reality, each keystone of the charm bracelet usually represents an important place or a thing so that one can keep in memory forever. Interestingly, after understanding the whole book Lovely Bones, charm bracelets portray more of the negative connotations rather than positive. Harvey has a habit of gathering “the group of charms… from the women” (Sebold 216). He also takes out the Pennsylvania keystone charm from Susie’s and connects it to his other collections of charm bracelets. By this we can infer that Harvey enjoys collecting the souvenir from the dead and truly engage in with the victim. This represents as a horrifying feature for me because I once had a charm bracelet that included my hometown keystone, too, which scares me out. As mentioned before, individual history is significant on identifying the meaning of certain symbols. In this case, the charm bracelet represents a mystical fear, due to the continuing collection of it from the murderer.

Symbolism appears quite often to portray deeper meanings of certain object. It is difficult for everyone to share the common factor about one subject, but somehow the subject applies to everyone. There is no clear symbol that writers think in mind to convey to the readers as they write. However, as Foster suggests, a "reader's imagination is the act of one creative intelligence engaging another" (Foster 107).

 Sarah Cho (Essay #4: Violence) Compared to other essays about the Slaughterhouse-five novel, I think you clearly understood the meaning of violence. You even pointed out, specifically what kind of or type of violence was used in your novel. However, I find no connection to the book we read as a whole, How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster, to compare to your novel. Rather than connecting to the book and applying, I think you were more into finding the "interesting" fact about how the author used violence. However, your essay really conveys the reader that you've put a lot of effort on searching the details! Also, the parentheses show be out of the quotation mark!^^ Other than that, nice job on your essay. - Jenice Lee 11C
 * Comment #1**

Kristie Lee (Essay #5: Season) By reading your essay, I could really relate to the novel that I read, //Lovely Bones// by Alice Sebold. Unlike your happy nature on Christmas mood, Sebold wrote the novel, too, in winter, Christmas, but as a period where every thing is disparaging. Because of a young girl's loss by a serial killer, all of her surrounding families or friends are in despair during that winter. I think your essay really woke me up to see another perspective of how writers use seasons to portray different meanings. Also, I can see how much effort you've put it in to this essay. Nice job overall! I was glad to see an essay that had totally different ideas with mine, but the same concept. Good Job :) - Jenice Lee 11C
 * Comment #2**