THE LOVELY BONES

The most important scene of the book is the scene in chapter one. The scene were Susie Salmon was raped and murdered.

My murderer was a man from our neighbourhood.

I was murdered on December 6, 1973, it was snowing, and I took a shortcut through the cornfield back from the junior high. Six feet from where Mr. Harvey stood, I stuck my tongue out to taste a snowflake. ‘’Don’t let me startle you,’’ Mr. Harvey said.

Of course, in a cornfield, in the dark, I was startled. ‘’Mr. Harvey,’’ I said.

‘’You’re the older Salmon girl, right?’’

‘’Yes’’

‘’I’ve built something back here,’’ he said. ‘’Would you like to see?’’

‘’I’m sort of cold, Mr. Harvey,’’ I said, ‘’and my mom likes me home before dark.’’

‘’It’s after dark, Susie,’’ he said.

I wish now that I had known this was weird. I had never told him my name. I guess I thought my father had told him one of the embarrassing anecdotes he saw merely as loving testaments to his children.

‘’I’ve made a little hiding place,’’ said Mr. Harvey, ‘’Come and see.’’

It was a hole, the size of a small room, the mud room in our house. I could almost stand up in it, but Mr. Harvey had to stoop.

‘’Look around,’’ he said.

‘’You’re very pretty, Susie.’’

‘’’Thanks’’ I said, I swallowed the rest of my coke, which was a lot, and said: ‘’I got to go, Mr. Harvey. This is a cool place but I have to go.’’

He stood up and did his hunchback number by the six dug-in steps that led to the world. ‘’I don’t know why you think you’re leaving.’’ ‘’Take your clothes off,’’ Mr. Harvey said.

‘’Mr. Harvey’’ I said, ‘’please let me leave.’’

‘’You’re not leaving, Susie. You’re mine now.’’

And after this conversation she became raped and after that he had murdered her.

This is definitely the most important scene because the whole book goes about this horrible event. In this book she’s in a world between heaven and earth. She can see everything what happens in the world and she defines us (the reader) little things about what happened in her life. The place where she is remaining is a beautiful world. This world is made fit for every death person. For every person is this world different. It is like a ‘’dream world’’.

So.. this scene influence the whole book because she is death. And at the end discovered her father who the murderer is.



2. Time and chronology
Describe the way time and chronology is used in the book.
The way time and chronology is used in this book is not so easy.

The book is set in the present. In the introduction described Susie how she is murdered. But you don’t really know if she told it right after she came in heaven or just a few days later. But the date when she was murdered was December the 6th, 1973. And the story ends eight year later! Then they found out, all the time was the murderer so close to her family and friends!

It is weird to explain how the chronology is used in this book because in fact it is chronologic. But she is all the time in a place between heaven and earth. She is spying everyone and of course she doesn’t see everything because she can’t follow everybody in the same time and sometimes she doesn’t follow her surviving relative. So you read every time a piece of what’s going on, not everything what is happening on earth, only the pieces that Susie saw.



3. Characters
A) Describe the personality of at least two (2) persons.
B) In what way are they alike, and in what way are they different from one other?
Susie Salmon
Susie Salmon was a girl of fourteen years old. When she’s old she want to be a wild- photographer. She was a sweet girl who good listens to her parents (because normally she never came after dark at home, always before dark). She is head over heels with Ray Singh, an older boy. She was murdered on December 6, 1973. She loves her family very much, and first she didn’t accept her death but later she did.

‘’I was slipping away, that's what it felt like, life was leaving me, but I wasn't afraid; then I remembered: There was something I was meant to do; somewhere I was meant to be."

George Harvey
Mr. Harvey was the murderer of Susie Salmon. He was an old man from her neighborhood. He lives in his own and likes his garden, he is good in take care of it. He has a moustache and classes. He is a violator and a murderer. He especially likes young girls of Susie’s age. If he hasn’t rape somebody in a while, he’s missing it. He makes a plan to tempt a new victim. Often he makes something were little girls are interested in. Like an underground shelter (what he made for Susie, a perfect place to rape somebody because no one can hear her screaming and no one can twig them). Mr. Harvey is an awful, disgusting and ugly old man.

‘’My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. I took his photo once; he stepped out of nowhere and ruined the shot. He ruined a lot of things.’’

‘’There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.’’

Alike:
There are hardly no arrangements between Mr. Harvey and Susie.

A few little things like:
• They are both human. 
• They live in the same neighborhood.
• They can both speak English.
• They be either all the time on the lookout. Mr. Harvey because he must see it when they find out that he killed her, and Susie because she can everyone follow in her place above earth. She wants to see how her family carry their lives on. And how Mr. Harvey his new plans accomplished.

Different from one other:
• Susie knows how to love somebody, Mr. Harvey doesn’t know the word love.
• Susie is a sweet girl who never will kill somebody, and will never hurt someone. On the other hand is Mr. Harvey murderer.
• Mr. Harvey likes to fuck and Susie doesn’t, her hobby is to make photo’s.
• Susie is death, Mr. Harvey not (by the way on the end he will die).
• Before Mr. Harvey had raped Susie, she was a virgin and Mr. Harvey don’t.