Susie Harvey Murder

Susie lies there motionless while a large, corpulent man moves on top of her. She tries to escape by thinking of her mother calling her for dinner or her baby brother trying to show her a picture. Yet, no matter how hard she attempts to remove her mind from the situation, Susie cannot ignore the great, shining kitchen knife now looming over her. In this opening scene from The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, readers are immediately made familiar with the context of the novel. Susie Salmon, the narrator, is murdered at the young age of fourteen by her sinister neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Susie then reports on the happenings on Earth from a place she calls, the Inbetween—a kind of purgatory that insists Susie and her family find closure. Throughout the novel, Sebold uses the cornfield, the Salmons’ porch light, and an icicle as major symbols to help develop the setting and the characters.

In Alice Sebold’s novel, The Lovely Bones, the Salmon family learns that their fourteen year old daughter, Susie Salmon, has been raped and murdered. Because of this her father, Jack, sister, Lindsey, and mother, Abigail, all go through their own respective journeys in order to accept this ordeal. During this time of grievance for Susie’s family, her father, Jack, believes that the person responsible for the murder of his daughter is his neighbour, a man named George Harvey, and reports this to detective Len Fenerman. However, Len Fenerman becomes too preoccupied with his affair with Abigail to aid Jack with his suspicions. Meanwhile, Susie’s younger siblings Lindsey and Buckley, try to learn how to cope with the loss of one of their very own, without their parent’s attention to aid them. In The Lovely Bones, Susie’s father, mother, and sister, all explore the theme of grief by going on their own pathways through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in order to come to terms with the brutal murder of their beloved Susie.

August 3rd, 1974, local neighborhood father found beaten in local school. Witnesses say that Mr. Salmon attacked neighborhood girl, Clarissa. Luckily, a young hero was there to save her. “I heard Clarissa screaming and found Mr. Salmon attacking her… I saw a bat on the ground and pursued him,” said Brian; Clarissa’s boyfriend and was luckily by the school when it had happened. People believe that this happened because of the death of his young daughter, Susie. “I believe that Mr. Salmon had become depressed over the death of his daughter that he had become somewhat deranged,” Len explained. Len Fenerman is a detective who has been leading Susie’s case. In Susie’s case, Len, as well as the rest of the police have found an elbow and a love note from Ray Singh. “I know my son didn’t do it… He is a brilliant and loving son,” said Ruana Singh, Ray’s mother.

“Lovely bones” is about a girl named Susie Solomon who got murder in December 6, 1973, when she was fourteen years old. The story begins when she was walking home from her school while her new neighbor/murder Mr. Harvey who was waiting for her at the corn field. When he saw her, he asked her to come and see something he built for the little kids, he built it under ground. When they crawled inside the hole underground, he told her to take off her clothes and he raped her. When she screamed for help, no one could hear her but still Mr. Harvey balled up her hat and smashed it into her mouth after he raped her, he told her “say you love me” she has to say and he killed her afterwards. Susie is now watching him, her family, her one & only crush Ray from heaven, she is watching how her brother Buckley which is 5 years old suffering without his big sister also her middle sister Lindsey. She is watching life continues without her, her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer is try to cover over his crime and removing any evidence that could lead to the cause of her death or his crime. Susie had a best friend at heaven her name was Holly who is her roommate and is watching with Susie life on earth. As Susie walking in heaven she met all the victims that

Throughout the story she has an internal problem in which she has to decide whether she wants to get revenger or vengeance on Mr. Harvey or if she wants her family to heal. She sees and tells the story from heaven. In the “place in between heaven and earth (purgatory)”, she meets a girl that helps her with her decision. Soon after that Susie states “We had been given, in our heavens, our simplest dreams”. I believe she was saying that her heaven was beautiful and all she would ever think it was and all she ever wanted could be found in her heaven. At the end of the movie, Mr. Harvey tries to lure a girl into his car and she refuses. Shortly after, he gets hit with an icicle and falls off a cliff and dies. I believe the icicle hitting Mr. Harvey was Susie’s way of preventing him from hurting anyone else. At the end of the book, Mr. Harvey leaves

Gothic Literature has a clear tendency to focus on and dramaticize violent actions. Given that this novel alone is based on the vicious murder of a young girl, Gothic Literature’s influence glaringly evident throughout the entire book. However, at certain moments it’s influence becomes more overwhelmingly apparent. This is true when Susie explicitly details the horrifying timeline of her murder. “I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could to not let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my hard-as-I-could was not hard enough, not even close, and I was soon lying down on the ground, in the ground, with him on top of me panting and sweating, having lost his glasses in the struggle” (12), Susie explains. This description illustrates both the dramatic and violent struggle prior to Susie’s death. Susie’s brutal murder is established and discussed again later in the novel when Len Fernerman shares the police department’s findings, stating that “...with the amount of blood we’ve found, and the violence it implies, as well as other material evidence we’ve discussed, we must work with the assumption that your daughter has been killed” (28). Because of the dramatic nature of this statement, and the violence it discusses, it flawlessly exhibits Gothic Literature’s influence on the novel once

The sudden disappearance of Susie Salmon, age 14, shocked the people of a small town in Pennsylvania. This distressing event happened on December 6, 1973 and it is now presumed that it was a murder. This crime was believed to take place in Stolfuz cornfield which is right behind the Junior High. Some horrific evidence has recently been discovered by a neighboring dog. No specific information has been released due to the investigation process that the police have to uphold. In a recent interview with head detective on the case, Len Fenerman, when asked if they have any leads at this point in the investigation, he answered, “As of right now we don’t have any specific leads but we are trying our hardest to find any piece of evidence that will

During the middle of the night, he goes out to the cornfield and begins digging a hole in the field for his plan. He picks the cornfield, knowing not only does it seem deserted throughout the day, but also that Susie takes this path everyday to go home.

Alice Sebold, the author of The Lovely Bones, paints a dark, mysterious picture at the beginning of the novel and emits a suspenseful mood. Susie Salmon, the protagonist, is a young teenager who gets tragically raped and murdered. She looks down from heaven where she is the only one who truly knows her killer. The murder of Susie Salmon becomes an interruption and disturbance to those that were linked to Susie in a way that the mystery of her murder drives them to the edge. The irony of Susie’s feelings of her “perfect world” is that she grows lonely in a place where all her wishes or desires become a reality. Even though Susie is gone and alone in heaven watching the life she used to know, she has a lasting impact on the lives of her friends and family

Susie is in heaven and is discovering Mr. Harvey’s previous murders and rapes. She meets his victims, and finds out how Mr. Harvey had murdered these women in the past. Many of his victims were young girls, his youngest victim was only six years old. Wendy Richter's murder particularly struck me as disturbing because this is the scene where Mr. Harvey starts to really expresses his depravity. He rapes Wendy and strangles her, and pretends to be having sex with her as two people pass by. The theme of the comparison and contrast between love and lust is prevalent in this scene. Mr. Harvey’s lust for the thrill of rape and murder is present while there is no trace of affection, remorse or guilt. He kills and rapes Wendy out of impulse, and after

The unfortunate circumstances that the Salmon family went through were depressing and a shock to everyone, but, it made everyone look at their lives and what was truly important to them. In the novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Susie, Buckley, and Lindsey think that they will be together forever, but after Susie is killed and no one knows what happened to her everyone decides to respond in a different way. Some violent, some illegal and some are just out of the protection of the family. But, Jack Salmon believes that Mr. Harvey is Susie’s killer and has put it at the top of his priorities to prove it. Their family did not only have to go through the loss of a loved one but after Susie’s Death they stopped communicating with one another,

Susie, viewing from paradise, is additionally overpowered with feeling and feels how she and Ruth rise above their present presence, and the two young ladies trade positions: Susie, her soul now in Ruth's body, associates with Ray, who detects Susie's nearness and is dazed by the way that Susie is quickly back with him. The two have intercourse as Susie has ached to do subsequent to seeing her sister and Samuel. A short time later, Susie comes back to paradise.

When you first meet fourteen year old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was back in 1973, she tells us; before Susie disappeared, or was killed. This novel takes place in a small town near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and it takes place from 1973 to 1981. There are some smaller settings in New Hampshire and California also. This story has a really sad and poignant mood. We mourn for Susie just like her family and friends do, and want things to go as planned for her in heaven. Although, when Mr. Harvey stalks his victims the mood is a little suspenseful as well.

After Mr. Harvey lures Susie to his “fort” in the ground, she is raped and murdered violently by him. In the novel, this goes into great detail and clarity especially when Susie admits that “He kissed his wet lips down my face and neck and then began to shove his hands up under my shirt, I wept” (14). The book bluntly describes everything that happens to Susie while she is being raped, maybe even too much. Although, when Mr. Harvey kills her, that is only said in one sentence when she declares that “The end came anyway” (15). Later on, the reader also finds out that Susie’s body parts are placed into a bag, which is the clearest the book reveals about her death. In the movie, this scene plays out much differently. All that is seen is when Mr. Harvey lures her into his “fort”. She then tries to escape up a ladder but he pulls her down. Then, she transitions into her heaven after she sees the bloody knife that Mr. Harvey uses to kill her with. There is no mention or even a hint of Susie being raped by this man. Not only does Mr. Harvey rape and kill Susie, but he has several other victims, all young girls, who he also does this to. Knowing that he rapes his victims before killing them shows that he desires power and dominion over others. It reveals that Mr. Harvey wants to have control not only over his life, but over other’s lives as well. This is the reason why

The moral side of this story, the murder, the investigation, puzzle scatter everywhere, the only thing left was to connect them together. After Susie Salmon disappeared, her family distance from each other, her father started to look for her, her mom left home, while in the meantime her spirit running through the forest, after been killed she assume that she was still alive, but as she was trying to speak to her father, her lost voice didn't reach him; that's how she started to notice herself as been a ghost or lost spirit. Susie Salmon, even after she realized she was dead, she kept on seeking a way to come back alive.