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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Many Stages of Grief
The Lovely Bones is the story of a child’s murder, and its key thematic focus is what it means to mourn such a horrifying tragedy. From heaven, Susie must confront and resolve her grief over the loss of her own life, her family, and the future she had imagined for herself. Her family has an even greater task. Susie’s disappearance and murder shatters her family, and, numb with grief, they must individually face their sadness, their failures, and their limitations. Across the novel, the characters process their emotions and grief in radically different ways, whether by shutting down, searching for answers, seeking revenge, running away, or hunkering down. This emotional work is not limited to members of the Salmon family. The detective in charge of Susie’s case, Len Fenerman, still struggles with his wife’s suicide, while Susie’s omniscience provides insight into the childhood trauma that damaged George Harvey. That there can be a kind of end to mourning, an acceptance of absence, is the novel’s hopeful conclusion, despite the suffering and sadness it regularly depicts.
Life and Death
Life and death are not strict opposites in The Lovely Bones. They exist instead on a kind of continuum, characterized most explicitly by the Inbetween, a space between heaven and Earth. Distinct from this place, though, the dead can appear to the living. In heaven, for example, Franny explains to Susie that the imaginary friends that young people have are often dead people who spend time with them, and Buckley sometimes sees his sister. Susie’s encounter with Ruth on the night of her death creates a bond between the two that breaks down the distinction between life and death in another way. When Susie inhabits Ruth’s body, she is able to achieve what she desires most from her (after)life—the chance to live again and have sex. As Susie explains in the third chapter, the line separating the living from the dead is often hard to discern.
Even characters who are alive grapple with this difference. Sometimes Susie seems more present to Jack than his living children—and he must remind himself to pay attention to them. Abigail’s transition from a vibrant woman to a person who wears a mask is a kind of metaphorical death, one exacerbated by the murder of her oldest child. In a different register, Lindsey has to manage the “walking dead syndrome,” described as a state in which people, herself included, see Susie when they look at her. Not only must the living characters learn to cope with death, they must also remember what it means to be alive.
Growing Up and Growing Older
The story of a young person’s journey to maturity is an important theme in The Lovely Bones. This might seem surprising as, in the book’s opening chapter, the main character is murdered. Susie Salmon does not grow up as a living person does, but the changes she undergoes as she matures in heaven are thematically central. She must adapt to her altered circumstances and recognize that existence in heaven requires new skills, priorities, and values. While Susie develops and grows in heaven, her siblings, Lindsey and Buckley, grow up on Earth. In the novel, it is Lindsey’s path to adulthood that is more important, although Buckley too must navigate many challenges. Still, because Susie identifies with her sister and can feel what her sister feels, Lindsey’s progression from girlhood to college to marriage to motherhood is central. While Susie grows up, if vicariously, with Lindsey, the younger sister must manage life in the shadow of her older sister’s death and in competition with her ghost.
