The Lovely Bones Research Paper

1224 Words5 Pages
After 14 year old, Susie Salmon’s murder, her family is stricken with grief, as any other family would be. Each member deals with their grief in their own way. “The novel essentially functions as both Susie and her family's personal act of narrative therapy--as the discursive mechanism through which she and her survivors both grieve for her loss and attempt to fashion new means for living with such an immutable absence. In this manner, The Lovely Bones necessarily encounters the processes via which human beings cope with death and its interpersonal consequences” (Womack).For some it causes them to withdraw and for others to spring into action. For any person with a murdered family member this would be a helpful novel to read. It provides comfort…show more content…
“Meanwhile, Abigail isolates herself by delving into the workaday world of the suburban housewife. Her obsession with the preparation of the family's meals and her daily chores allows the time to pass more quickly, thus limiting her ability to reflect upon her daughter's ordeal” (Womack). Feeling trapped in her maternal duties she leaves the family. In the fight or flight response her choice was flight. She felt as if she could not be constantly reminded of the murder of her daughter and that the only way she could escape it would be to leave everything behind. She spends some time in her father's cabin and then moves to California and takes a job at a winery. Whenever anyone asks about her family she says she has two children, Lindsey and Buckley. She pretended that Susie never existed to get over her death. This is a very unhealthy way to deal with grief and resulted in the hurt of more people than Abigail imagined. Leaving a whole family at their time of grief was selfish. No matter how hurt she was, she inflicted more hurt on her family by abandoning them. For people dealing with this type of grief it is difficult for them to believe they will ever be okay, thus they pretend it ever happened. But it is impossible for anyone to forget something that tragic and you need to be there for your family. Although they may feel that fleeing is the best choice for them, their vision is tainted and they seem to forget that they aren’t the only person in
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