The Cast of Characters

Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones narrates the chain of events that results from the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl, Susie Salmon. By giving each character a unique way of grappling with their grief, Sebold breathes life into them. Since grief at the loss of a loved one is such a basic and primal human emotion, a certain sympathy for the character is instilled in the reader and thus they seem more real.
Mr. Salmon, Susie’s father, develops a rabid obsession with finding his daughter’s killer. He experiences a surge of vengeance that causes him to doubt the efforts of the detectives and to make plans to find and kill the man who he suspects is guilty. His paternal protective instinct remains firmly intact even though his eldest daughter is deceased, which is a trait that can easily tug the heartstrings of the reader. Mr. Salmon’s quest of avenge his daughter’s death also isolates him from the other characters and thus leaves him to grieve in relative solitude.
Mrs. Salmon’s grief manifests itself in a very different manner than that of her husband. She seeks to fill the void that her daughter left by falling in love with the detective who is investigating her daughter’s murder. Once she realizes how much the affair is hurting what remains of her family, she leaves them out of guilt. In the solitude of traveling by herself she is able to contemplate not only the extinguished life of her daughter, but her own life as well. Her urge to escape the painful situation makes her more fallible and therefore more human.
Lindsey, Susie’s younger sister, is given the greatest burden to shoulder. Not only must she experience the loss of her older sister, but also deal with the whisperings of classmates that forever brand her as “the dead girl’s sister”. Of all of the characters, she behaves with the most grace and resolve. She is there to remind her father that though he lost one of his daughters, he still has another for whom he must go on with his life. Through the process of her grieving, she also meets her first boyfriend and eventually marries him after graduating from college. He provides valuable moral support to her because he is a neutral third party in the murder incident and can thus comfort Lindsey without any grief of his own to process. Through Lindsey, the reader sees more of the quotidian manifestations of loss (such as the reaction of her classmates and the need to continue through school in spite of her situation) and can thus see her as more of a real human being.
In my opinion, the most fascinating characterizations in Sebold’s novel are those of Ruth and Ray. Ray was Susie’s crush at the time of her death and was therefore the police’s first suspect. Ruth barely knew Susie, however, she was touched by Susie’s spirit as it ascended to the afterlife and henceforth became obsessed with communicating with the other side. Though neither character was as close to Susie as her family was, her death still alters the course of their lives. Through these two characters, Sebold shows how a shared tragedy can bring people unexpectedley together. As they try to carry on with their lives, they both seek someone who can understand them, which is a fundamentally human trait.
The very nature of the story allows for very dramatic characterizations because death is a subject that is so jarringly real that it is much easier to identify with the characters who are still living and having to experience the aftermath. Seeing the characters struggle with something that is so common to the human experience makes them seem to be more than simply words on a page. (627)