The Lovely Bones

Chapter 2 Reflection-
In the beginning of Chapter 2 of "The Lovely Bones," there's a line spoken by Jack Salmon,
Susie's father. He said, "Nothing is ever certain," meaning that in life, there are no guarantees or
absolute certainties, highlighting life's unpredictability. As Susie finds herself in a state between
heaven and earth, she meets Holly, a Vietnamese girl. She also encounters Franny, a social
worker who was shot in the head by a depressed person.While reading Chapter 2, I learned
something that I don't always apply in my daily life— the importance of not rushing to judgment.
In the story, many characters, including the police officers like Mrs. Dewitt, Mr. Bott, and Susie's
lover, Ray Singh, undergo hardships as evidence connects them to Susie's death. However, in
the end, the police discover that they weren't the ones who killed Susie.The middle part of
Chapter 2 is quite sorrowful as Susie's family learns about her demise. It's painful to witness
your family suffering on Earth because you're no longer there. It's heartbreaking to see them go
through the pain of your absence. I perceive that many people may only realize your worth,
worry about you, and care for you when you're no longer part of this world. That's the sentiment
I picked up from Chapter 2 of "The Lovely Bones."

Chapter 3 Reflection-

life is slipping away from you. In those moments, it's as if you grab onto the idea of death as if
it's a rope that can take you somewhere else. You swing on that rope, hoping to land in a place
different from where you currently are. It's a vivid way of expressing the feeling of wanting to
escape a difficult or overwhelming situation.
Summary
The oddest thing about looking down on Earth from heaven, Susie says, is the ability to see
souls leaving bodies in real time and flying up to heaven. Susie explains that when a soul
departs earth it often passes by another living being, occasionally touching them lightly on the
arm or cheek before continuing up to heaven. Though the dead are never seen by the living,
some are sensitive to their presence.
Analysis
In developing one of the book’s major conceits, Susie reveals that the world of the dead and the
world of the living often brush up against one another more closely than one might believe. Just
how close the dead can come to the living, and how directly they can influence them, is
something that Susie will question and reckon with again and again as her story unfolds.

- On Susie’s way up to heaven, she touched a girl named Ruth—a classmate of hers,
though the two had never been close. Ruth was standing in Susie’s way on the night her
soul “shrieked” away from Earth, and Susie could not help but graze her—she was so
distraught, and as her soul departed and whooshed past the last living person Susie
would ever see, she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch Ruth’s face. The
morning after Susie’s death, Ruth complains to her mother of an odd dream in which a
pale ghost ran toward her, but Ruth’s mother chastises her for letting her imagination run
away with her. Ten days later, when news of Susie’s death reaches the junior high, Ruth
begins putting two and two together.
 - Susie’s departure from Earth was a frightening, discombobulating, and isolating
experience. As her soul departed, she consciously chose to attempt to connect with a
living person one final time—that person was Ruth, and the implications this encounter
will have for both women is vaster than Susie ever could have realized.
-
- Ruth begins writing poetry to express her feelings about the experience of being “passed
by.” She also becomes obsessed with Susie, going through old yearbooks and cutting
out anything that has to do with Susie. The last week before Christmas, Ruth comes
upon Susie’s friend Clarissa and her boyfriend, Brian Nelson, giggling in the hallway.
Brian has a hand inside of Clarissa’s shirt. If it had been anyone else, Ruth would have
looked away, but because she knows that Clarissa was Susie’s best friend, she stays
and watches. Brian asks Clarissa to come with him to the cornfield, but Clarissa coyly
refuses. After the two of them leave, Ruth burgles Clarissa’s locker, looking for anything
to do with Susie. All she finds is a large stash of marijuana, which she smokes all in one
sitting that evening in her parents’ garage.
- Susie didn’t realize how deeply she’d affect Ruth when she touched her on her way up to
heaven. Now, as news of Susie’s murder spreads through the school, Ruth is by far the
classmate most affected by Susie’s death. As she observes Clarissa and Brian, it seems
as if she’s wondering how they can act like everything is normal. Realizing how close
Clarissa was to Susie in life, Ruth is both upset by Clarissa’s seemingly detached
attitude and desirous of whatever secrets Clarissa might have about Susie, and so she
attempts to get closer to Susie by infiltrating one of Clarissa’s private spaces.
- Susie watches her school friends day and night from her gazebo. The freedom to
observe the whole school is “intoxicating,” and Susie watches the dramas and passions
of both students and adults play out all over campus. An art teacher makes love to his
girlfriend in the kiln room; the assistant football coach leaves anonymous chocolates for
the married science teacher; the principal “moon[s]” over the assistant football coach.
- For Susie, watching her own family is sad and demoralizing; watching her friends,
classmates, and teachers, however, is intoxicating and intriguing. Susie begins to realize
the wide range of her new perspective, and the secret actions and desires it allows her
to bear witness to. It seems as if her desire to absorb the “secrets” of life from afar is
coming true after all.

Chapter 4 Reflection
- Summary: Susie looks back on the hours after she was murdered, during which Mr.
Harvey made moves to cover up the crime. First, he collapsed the hole in the cornfield
and returned home with a sack filled with Susie’s body parts. He placed the sack in the
garage and went upstairs to wash up. Years later, Susie notes, the new owners of the
house will “tsk” over the dark spot on the floor of the garage, believing it to be simply an
unsightly oil stain.
- Analysis: Susie’s death will ripple through the lives of her friends, family, and
neighbors—past and future—in unimaginable ways. By revealing that the stain where
her blood once leaked through a canvas sack onto the garage floor will become an
 object of ire for the house’s future residence, she reveals that the impact of the dead on
the living is often greater and longer-lasting than one might realize.
-
- Susie says it would be some time before she understood what the reader has
“undoubtedly already assumed”—that she was not Harvey’s first kill. Though Harvey
knew to watch the weather for ideal precipitation conditions that would rob the police of
evidence, he was nonetheless fairly sloppy in his removal of Susie’s body from the
scene of the crime.
- Harvey’s sloppiness with Susie’s body is uncharacteristic—he is a serial killer of women,
and an expert in how to cover his tracks, judging by the fact that he has not yet been
caught. This sloppiness seems to mark Susie’s murder as different from his other kills,
and the effects of this difference will affect Mr. Harvey’s life in ways he can’t yet see or
imagine.
- At Susie’s Evensong in heaven, she watches all of her dogs lift their heads when they
smell something interesting in the air, then decide to track the scent, and decide what to
do when they come up against the source of the smell itself. She remarks that dogs don’t
shut down their desire to know something just because the smell is bad or dangerous,
and sees her own behavior—obsessively watching Mr. Harvey—in this light.
- Susie knows that her constant observation will eventually take a toll on her. Watching her
family and friends is one thing—it seems harmless, though of course it causes her
frustration—but watching Mr. Harvey is a harmful and painful ordeal. Still, Susie can’t
look away as she marvels at the injustice of her killer moving through the world as a free
man.
-
- Susie remembers watching Mr. Harvey take the sack full of her remains to a sinkhole on
the edge of town, which locals use to dump old appliances. Susie herself has been to
this sinkhole with her father to dump an old refrigerator, and she remembers Jack
describing the sinkhole as the Earth’s mouth. Mr. Harvey knocked on the door of the
house belonging to the family who operated the sinkhole and charged people to dump
goods. When a woman answered the door and jokingly asked if he had a dead body in
the safe, Mr. Harvey quickly covered with a story about how the safe had belonged to his
father, and no one could remember the combination. Susie notes that the family who ran
the sinkhole would never suspect, even after reading countless newspaper articles about
Susie’s death, that she had been what was in that metal safe.
- The sinkhole is one of the novel’s most poignant symbols. When Susie’s remains are
tossed in the sinkhole, she is swallowed by the Earth, and it seems as if any chance of
her murder being solved is swallowed along with it. But by the simple act of continuing to
obsessively watch not just life on Earth but specifically the life and actions of her cruel,
despicable murderer, Susie is still being “swallowed” by the Earth, dragged and pulled
down by her desire to see what is going on in her absence. Susie’s body, now trapped in
the sinkhole, will never be free or able to be used as a tool in her own liberation and Mr.
Harvey’s comeuppance; likewise, Susie’s mind, trapped in the Inbetween, will never be
free if she cannot let go of the Earth’s downward pull.