The Lovely Bones

So slowly but surely, I have been reading The Lovely Bones which is a wonderful yet tragic novel full of sadness and learning to move on. I had seen the movie first, which I don't often do and honestly am disappointed in the movie. The book focused so much more on the girl watching her family try to cope with everything and how they move on from her death but the movie focused so much more on her time in heaven. Anywho the movie is still pretty good but it only has the basic outline of the book in it, other than that the two are completely different.

Anyway, while reading the novel the other day, I looked at the back of the book and in it is a grayed out section that contains discussion questions. Normally I would ignore those but lately I have found it interesting to see what others deem the most important parts of the book. The first question mentions the very beginning of the novel, which most people remember as being "My name was Salmon, like the fish..." when actually the very beginning of the novel describes Susie as a child and her father explaining that the penguin in the snow globe is in his own perfect world. The question asks how that relates to Susie's situation and whether it really is a great and perfect world or whether it's a curse.

Personally, I find it to be a curse. Sure, she can do whatever she wants in her heaven, but she is still subject to seeing everything in the outside world. She, like the penguin is in a glass bubble, watching the world go by around her and she can't be a part of it, she can't even stop it. It's a curse because she has to watch her family try to live with the fact that she is dead and watch her murderer get away with what he did to her and other women. She has to watch the mistakes her mother makes, her father obsess over her death, her sister grieve in an unhealthy way. She has to watch all of this and not be able to do anything to help them or stop them or allow them to fully move on. That is why it is a curse, because like that penguin, she is stuck watching everything fall apart and try to reconnect itself and that in itself is a terrible thing.

Anyway, I just really thought that was the perfect question because everybody has their own opinions to something like that. Some people would say it's great because she can no longer be harmed and she has the opportunity to move on and be in peace; but to me, it's a true curse that I really would never want to go through. It's selfish but who really wants to watch everybody they ever knew continue to live and move on with their lives when they are incapable.