Empires Crumble the Great Chain of Being

In J. M. Coetzee and Joseph Conrad’s novels, the authors condemn civilization and imperialism. Coetzee and Conrad argue that civilization brings darkness and is destructive for the natives or barbarians, whom it encounters. In essence, empires negatively influence the officials involved and the surrounding citizens affected by its domineering presence. Civilization both degrades and elevates man to places that he does not belong. Both Waiting for the Barbarians and Heart of Darkness discuss man’s humanity and the Great Chain of Being by examining people’s existences in the levels above and below man, which are animal and God.

The Magistrate, throughout the novel, stumbles upon men who have degraded to animal instincts as a result of their empire’s harsh actions. Waiting for the Barbarians and Heart of Darkness have slightly different approaches to addressing their common theme. In Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate witnesses his Empire’s cruel torture toward the barbarian captives during interrogations and in the open courtyard. The Magistrate also suffers through this dehumanizing experience himself when Mandel imprisons him. He worries as he thinks, “A bestial life is turning me into a beast” (78). Over the course of the novel, and finally in at the climax of the story, the Magistrate realizes that the Empire is ruining the barbarians’ lives. Ultimately, he confronts Colonel Joll in the courtyard and declares, “Look! … We are the great miracle of creation! But from some blows this miraculous body cannot repair itself! … Look at these men! … Men!” (105). The Magistrate, outraged at the Empire’s horrific acts of dehumanization, wonders how the Empire could force the barbarians to suffer all in the name of the Empire. In the end, Coetzee asserts that civilized empires—or perhaps civilization in general—must not exist if people are to going to be able to live fully and humanly.

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s ingrained imperial lessons and compassion for the natives wrestle within him during his journey into the heart of Africa. It is clear that the Africans have animalistic tendencies when Marlow first sees them on the coast. He recounts, “One of these creatures rose [sic] his hands and knees and went off on all-fours towards [sic] the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand” (17). The image portrays very primitive movements, and Marlow recalls the vision as horrifying to watch. However, Marlow’s feelings become fairly ambiguous and contradictory when he considers one of the African workers on his ship. The “fireman” is making sure that the furnace is generating enough steam for the ship to run. Marlow ponders, “He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge” (37). His opinions about civilization’s effects on natives conflict with his inborn perceptions of the “barbaric” Africans. Obviously, Conrad suggests, imperialism is a complicated issue; however, like Coetzee, Conrad ultimately contends that imperialism is most often a vile institution.

Humanity is a common, central theme in countless novels. Most stories include a struggle between maintaining man’s humanity and degrading to animal instincts. Other novels, however, describe the effects of man’s hubris or corruption. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness discusses the Great Chain of Being even further by observing Kurtz’s native African rule, in which the natives honor Kurtz like a deity. Ultimately, man must face a constant struggle of preserving its true nature without succumbing to bestial or divine temptation. God gave them this position in the Great Chain of Being for a reason, and it is our responsibility to uphold it. (613)

Humanity Prevails in Waiting for the Barbarians

Authors consistently utilize human nature as a theme in their literature, usually to make a statement about human society. At this point in the novel, J. M. Coetzee’s message about humanity is not yet apparent, except in his obvious statement about torture—that it is morally and unjustifiably wrong—; however, he creates three distinct characters that, by the end of chapter three, offer very different perspectives on the novel’s circumstances and events. J. M. Coetzee’s allegorical novel Waiting for the Barbarians conducts a methodical examination of human nature in its three primary characters: the blind barbarian girl, Colonel Joll, and the Magistrate.

Colonel Joll is the cruel, heartless, and tyrannical representative from the Empire’s capital. Joll is primarily noted for his intense torture treatment toward barbarian prisoners to discover the “truth.” Our first image of Joll is in the very first pages of the novel when he wears his sunglasses. The scene dramatically introduces him as a wicked man who hides behind the sunglasses’ shades to avoid revealing his inner thoughts and emotions. However, his cruelty has no bounds, evident by his torture methods. In fact, we readers are forced to question the validity of this "truth" that Joll is trying to extract from his victims. Joll is clearly the Magistrate's antagonist, but he is only a microcosmic entity from the macrocosmic Empire, which represents a much larger, stronger, and more formidable opposition.

The blind girl is the most participatory barbarian in the novel so far, as she and the Magistrate develop a uniquely close yet indefinable relationship. She is a product of Joll’s and the Empire’s ruthless attempts to attain indescribable power. We have not met an entire barbarian society yet, but the girl offers the best initial insight and perspective of the barbarians. She is simple, plain, and direct, and she hates long, deep, and meaningful conversations. The girl, as well, is a mysterious and troubling force in the eyes of the Magistrate, who ends up having to evaluate his feelings for her.

The Magistrate, also the narrator of the story, is the most complex of the characters as he struggles to determine the morality and his opinions of the situations that he faces, particularly in his encounters with Colonel Joll and the blind barbarian girl. The first of these ethical dilemmas is torture. The Magistrate first encounters torture when the townspeople hear the barbarian uncle and nephew cry out during their suggested torture in the very beginning of the story, and again when the Magistrate interrogates the attending guard. The Magistrate’s interrogation of the guard completely reveals to us what occurred inside the room. In his debates and inward speculation over torture, the Magistrate concludes that torture is an abominable practice that clearly destroys people’s lives, for example the blind barbarian girl. As for the girl, the Magistrate struggles with this intense desire to protect her and care for her—he seems to think that protecting her has to include having sexual relations with her as well—as well as the lack of sexual attraction that he feels for her. While he never really comes to a solid conclusion about his feelings for her, he becomes a character that we feel sympathy for because he is essentially trying to discover what it means to be human, a feeling that seems to be nonexistent and has yet to be realized.

The novel clearly focuses on the issues that the Magistrate has encountered since the arrival of Colonel Joll: torture and sex. However, it is also obvious that the Magistrate’s story is far from complete. I have a mixture of eagerness and apprehension as I prepare to read the upcoming chapters in this wonderfully developed novel that seeks to explore variations of human nature and what it means to be human.
(633)

The Africans' Identity Crisis: Hegel vs. Darwin

“The African Character” by G. W. F. Hegel (1830), p. 208-12
• The African is the “natural man in his completely wild and untamed state” (208), who does not realize that there is a higher power greater than him is. Africans instead practice sorcery, which “exhibits man as the highest power” and gives them “control” over the natural elements, such as rain and storm (209).
• Consequently, Africans have contempt for humanity because there is nothing above them to revere. Furthermore, they have no knowledge of the human soul’s immortality.
• The disrespect for human life and soul manifests itself in political tyranny/constitution, cannibalism, interracial slavery—parents and children sell one another for survival, suggesting instinctual, or animalistic, tendencies—, polygamy, and African fanaticism.
• In terms of slavery, Hegel contends that African enslavement under European control has been essential for “the increase of human feeling among the Negroes” (212). Nonetheless, Hegel insists that slavery is unjust but also that it should be abolished slowly rather than instantly, because slavery needs to “mature” the Africans.

“On the Races of Man” by Charles Darwin (1871), p. 212-17
• There are two schools of anthropologists over the debate of the number of humankind’s species: monogenists and polygenists—“those who believe that human beings descend from a single origin (Darwin’s view that humans evolved from apes) or from many different species.
• Apparently, polygenists are just wrong, because they are rejecting the notions of evolution, thus saying that species, in this case different forms of man, are separate creations, which in turn forces them to decide what forms of man will be considered species. However, “it is a hopeless endeavor to decide this point, until some definition of the term ‘species’ is generally accepted” (213), which apparently is impossible to do.
• On the other hand, monogenists agree despite the superficial aspects of each existing race of man, all the races must come from the same “primitive stock” because there numerous similarities found in the entire human structure across racial lines, including Africans and Europeans.
• Essentially, Africans and Europeans are very alike in habits, dispositions, and inventive or mental powers. Differences do exist manifested in languages, behaviors, and qualities of life.
• Differences between the various races cannot be accounted for by different conditions of life, by evolutionary changes in body—both body parts and physical aspects.

The Completion of the Compson Downfall

The Sound and the Fury’s final section displays the final moments before the Compson’s inevitable downfall. From Quentin’s escape to Mother’s insanity to Jason’s neurotic pursuit, the narrator describes the deterioration of each Compson’s behavior. Furthermore, there is no possible way for the Compsons to carry on their name with a suitable male heir—that is, one who is emotionally or mentally stable. Benjy is, well, he’s Benjy—a mentally challenged young man who is completely unfit to continue the family tree—; Quentin was extremely neurotic and haunted by Caddy’s lost innocence and has already committed suicide by the story’s end; and Jason is far too angry to settle down with a wife and bear children. The three disturbed young men are unable to continue the family’s legacy, and the family is slowly destroying itself from the inside out. The novel starts and ends with Benjy. In the beginning, we are completely unaware of how twisted and dysfunctional each Compson is, but in the end, we see that there is little to no hope for the Compson family. Any bright future that the family once had vanishes with Quentin’s ultimate, abrupt departure. (193)

Incest and Overall Sexual Morality

I believe, and certainly hope, that Americans’ morals will not degrade to accept incest as a commonality or tolerable phase of sexual development. Interestingly, Karl F. Zender's research in his article “Faulkner and the Politics of Incest” indicates that there are two minority parties, one radical and one liberal, who would accept this evolution of sexual development. Zender says,

The radical party consisted of a loose congeries of psychoanalysts and philosophers …, surrealist litterateurs, and advocates of various forms of sexual liberation. The liberal party consisted of the group of second-generation Freudian theorists and therapists known as the Neo Freudian Revisionists…. Both parties extended, although in different ways, the romantic questioning of the incest taboo. For René Guyon …, [a radical,] all forms of the incest taboo are merely conventional. Because “a weakening in the moral and social condemnation of the incest … usually accompanies the growth of a general tendency to call into question the taboo on sex,” he says, “in time the community itself will cease to be interested in this out-of-date taboo.” Within the liberal faction, by contrast, no call for a literal abandonment of the taboo exists; but an ameliorative romantic optimism nonetheless reveals itself in the tendency of the Neo-Freudians to view sibling incest fantasy and play as simply a normal and expected stage of adolescent sexual development, fated to be outgrown and therefore not requiring severe cultural or parental disapprobation.[1]

Even though the article hardly talks about incest in the context of The Sound and the Fury, or even though it relates this novel with some of Faulkner’s other novels, including Absalom, Absalom!, as well as incest, the article was very interesting. Zender articulates his argument very well by specifically linking each of Faulkner’s novels with one another by pointing out similarities and differences in an apparently commonly portrayed incest theme. The article as well discussed the literary difference between parent-child and sibling incest. Apparently, “parent-child incest is universally condemned in Romantic literature…; sibling incest, on the other hand, is invariably made sympathetic, is sometimes exonerated, and, in [Lord] Byron’s and [Percy] Shelley’s works, is definitely idealized.” This Romantic concept about incest fits nicely with the liberal idea that incest is acceptable as a transitory phase of sexual development. Romantics use parent-child incest to portray a tyrannical patriarchal social order, while sibling incest carries egalitarian ideals. On a separate note, incest was preferred for maintaining class and ethnic gene pools. While none of these political aspects are particularly to The Sound and the Fury, they still provided some fascinating insight into incest and its literary and political applications.

Specifically in reference to Quentin in The Sound and the Fury, Zender’s article is spot on and incorporates some of the other themes in the novel. Zender observes that the incest motif “joins with doubling, repetition, and revenge to enact a doomed oedipal struggle against the priority of the father over the son and of the past over the present and the future.” Furthermore, it also “expresses ‘the inability of the ego to break out of the circle of the self and of the individual to break out of the ring of the family,’ and it becomes a symbol ‘of the state of the South after the Civil War, … of a region turned in upon itself.” In other words, the use of this motif emphasizes Quentin’s constant feelings of confinement in his family history and in the Code of the South. In addition, because incest is supposedly such a base action, its existence in the novel represents the dying years of the old South after the Civil War. Another aspect of this motif is that Quentin feels as though Time is haunting him, as he cannot escape it. He breaks his watch, but it still works; the shadows around the city tell him the location of the sun and, in turn, the time; and the clocks chime at every quarter hour. Quentin is haunted by everything in his life. Even though he and Caddy never commit incest, the incest motif accentuates Quentin’s inability to elude his past. As a result, Quentin commits suicide because he felt overwhelmed by time, his burdens, and most of all by Caddy’s lingering presence.

While Zender writes a compelling argument, there are numerous medical and ethical reasons that contradict any possible social acceptance of incest. While Zender did not address the argument’s opposing aspects in the article, I do have my own opinions on the matter that I would like to express. From a medical and more objective standpoint, incest should not be permissible because any children that are produced will be born with genetic disorder. It is not fair to the baby to have to endure lifelong difficulties because of his or her parents’ sexual desires. From an ethical and more emotional perspective, no one should allow incest because it crosses all familial boundaries. Brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are meant to be a family, not a family of lovers and inter-relationships. Furthermore, parent-child incestuous relationships are forms of child abuse usually stemming from a particularly dominant parent. On a larger scale, incest also disrupts the natural order of the world, the human law or instinct that says to find a suitable mate to procreate. Incest, in connection to the biological impediments, does not allow suitable reproduction. It benefits everyone if incest is disallowed.

Overall, Zender’s article is fairly intricate with many details and information about a number of Faulkner’s novels; however, the article was still intriguing to read. Even though The Sound and the Fury itself is a minor part of the article, it was fascinating—and admittedly a little weird—to read about the political aspects of incest on a national scale. One piece that I thought was lacking from the article was the existence of the dominant sexual tension between Caddy and Quentin. Nonetheless, Zender offers an insightful and educational piece about incest, but I still believe that incest should never be acceptable in my life or in the rest of the world.

[1] Karl F. Zender, “Faulkner and the Politics of Incest,” American Literature 70.4 (1998), JSTOR, 22 Oct. 2008 .

From Greasy Lake to Sunny Lake, From Youth to Adulthood

It is generally acknowledged that as people grow older, they mature into sophisticated, hard-working, and experienced adults. However, the difference lies in the age at which we transition from childhood to adulthood. Sometimes, the change occurs when we are still children or teenagers, while sometimes it takes others longer to make that transformation. In “Greasy Lake,” we witness the narrator’s maturing as a direct result of two events: the fight with Bobbie—the “bad greasy character”—and the discovery of Al’s dead body. Furthermore, his observations of his natural surroundings, particularly of the lake, at the start and the end of the story confirm his transformation into adulthood.

The first of these two life-changing incidents is the fight with Bobbie, evident in the aftermath of this brawl. Admittedly, the narrator does not fully mature until after the discovery of Al's body, but he definitely achieves a sort of understanding that his actions were wrong. The time that the narrator spends hiding in the lake before he discovers the dead body certainly reveals the beginning of his human development. The narrator does not and cannot fully mature in these moments, because he believes that he can escape without apprehension. In addition, he does not feel ashamed for brutally attacking a man and almost raping a woman. The narrator cannot grow until he recognizes his faults and wrongdoings.

To be honest, it is not obvious to me if the narrator regrets his violence. He does not explicitly express his remorse for his actions, but he reveals his relief when he realizes that Bobbie survived the hard blow to his head. Yet, he remains in his hiding spot. I think I’m hoping that he feels guilty for the trouble he has caused, but there does not appear to be any correlating thought process in the story. I do believe, however, that after the second and more influential event, the discovery of Al’s body, the narrator begins a more rapid and overt character change. When he encounters the corpse, the narrator is absolutely horrified and repulsed. He feels like “a mere child, an infant” (21). Later, the narrator considers possible excuses or even suicide. He then considers Al’s fate, the body before him, and gains perspective. The narrator realizes that he is much better off than the dead man is, since “my car was wrecked; he was dead” (31). Even though the narrator may not regret his most recent actions, it is clear that he finally recognizes that his way of life is destructive and that he could end up like Al.

In case the anguished emotions of the narrator do not establish his change in demeanor, his perspective of the beach around him does certainly. Twice, the narrator gives his viewpoint of what nature is in terms of the beach, using the phrase, “This was nature.” At the beginning of the story, the narrator describes nature as a dank, dirty, and “festering murk” (2). The scene that the narrator paints for us makes Greasy Lake sound unappealing and a sore sight. Even during the series of events, the lake’s depiction is revolting and repulsive. Any lake filled with “muck” and “feculent undergrowth” does not seem like a place in which I would be interested in swimming (19). On the other hand, at the conclusion of the story, the illustrations become more positive, brighter. There is finally “a sheen of sun on the lake,” a lake that seemed filthy moments ago (45). In unison with the narrator’s changed demeanor, nature seems to be refreshing itself after being unclean for so long.

In conclusion, we can see clearly that the narrator alone, if not all three friends, has experienced a life-changing incident. Before, he was greasy and bad and was always causing trouble with Digby and Jeff. Now, he seems inclined to reform his ways and live a better life. Even the final sentences imply a somewhat despondent yet positive future: when the friends drive away from the girl in the end with “her shoulders slumped, hands out-stretched,” they seem to be leaving behind this wayward life for good (45). [685 words]


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What is it about Digby and Jeff that inspires the narrator to call them “bad”? What does he mean?
   
2. Why does the narrator feel compelled or feel the urge to rape the “fox”?
   
3. Do you think that the narrator feels remorse for his actions?
   
4. At the end of the story, when the girl offers to party with the three friends, what causes the narrator to say, “I thought I was going to cry”?
   
5. The narrator appears to be an intelligent and well-educated young man. Why does he choose to do the things he does with Digby and Jeff?

No Country for Good Men

From the very first sentence of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we learn that the grandmother is a bit of an obstinate character. She initially refuses to go to Florida with her family, because she selfishly desires to travel to Tennessee instead. While she does cave in, the grandmother still seems to be a constant pest to the family despite all of her good intentions. However, I did not particularly care too much about the grandma and her relationship with all of the other characters. No, my interest lay in the symbolism of the grandma and her seemingly pointless conversation with the barkeeper.

The grandma seems to represent a passing generation, evident in how she dresses, how she talks, and what she says. For the trip, she is dressed like a lady in white gloves and a straw hat (12). She alone admires the mountains, and she recounts the memory of her and Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden. The tale exemplifies the grandmother’s somewhat outdated existence in the short story. All her mannerisms and characteristics are extremely old-fashioned, and her family does not heed her set of values and preferences, including being respectful and traveling to Tennessee. The granddaughter is a total smart aleck, and the rest of the family almost completely ignores her. The conversation between the grandma and Red Sammy expresses nostalgia for the time when there were nice people who were trustworthy and honest. Now, Sammy says, “a good man is hard to find” (44). I think this story also resonated with me because the discussion between the grandmother and Red Sammy very much applies this very era. “These days [we] don’t know who to trust,” as Sammy laments (35).

Grandmother’s symbolism again reveals itself, perhaps more strongly, in the scene when she is holding the baby in the car. The grandma plays with her grandson, making all sorts of silly noises and faces. In reply, the infant only gives “her a faraway smile” (22). The key word is faraway, suggesting that the baby is acknowledging this very visible past but is declining to be a part of it. He will embrace it tenderly, lovingly but will not accept it as his own.

This story, especially the ending, reminded me of the recent Coen brothers’ film No Country for Old Men. The plot of the film is fairly bleak, and, similar to the story, in the end, everyone dies. Both the movie and this story suggest that the “good times” have gone, and now there is more violence and other terrible nonsense going on in this “new time.” The scene in the bar clearly illustrates the dying era and the nostalgia expressed for it. The Misfit provides extra demonstration that the grandmother’s generation is past, destroying the last living remnants of it through her murder. Even though the Misfit is somewhat of a “gentleman” to the grandma, he clearly is not part of her generation regardless of his age, because he is spiritually disturbed and ends up shooting every member of the family. (510 words)

Mr. Kapasi’s Desperate Escape from Marital Boredom, a.k.a. Mr. Kapasi is a Pig

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “Interpreter of Maladies,” the limited omniscient narrator writes from the perspective of tour guide Mr. Kapasi. Mr. Kapasi, as we learn through his conversation with Mr. Das, is also a language interpreter for a doctor. From the moment Mr. Kapasi mentions his other occupation and Mrs. Das reacts until the end of the story, there exists this assumption within Mr. Kapasi—one that the reader shares as well because of the narration style—that Mrs. Das is sexually drawn to him. Although we learn later that this preconception was entirely false, it is undeniable that attraction seemed the only explanation for Mrs. Das’s behavior. Mrs. Das insists that Mr. Kapasi sit with her (and her family) at lunch, she wants to know more about his job, she asks for his address, and she even stays in the car with him at the caves. Even though there are a couple obscure signs that suggest that Mrs. Das is not interested in sex, Mr. Kapasi and we the readers ignore them and jump to conclusions.

Mrs. Das is very interested in this alternative aspect of Mr. Kapasi’s life, because she believes that Mr. Kapasi can “cure” her of her guilt. She does not intend in any way to have an affair with Mr. Kapasi. Mr. Kapasi, however, completely misinterprets Mrs. Das’s actions and fascination with his career. When she says that his job is romantic, Mr. Kapasi feels flattered by her praise and assumes that she is suddenly attracted to him. The narrator does not even leave the readers to wonder why Mrs. Das enchants Mr. Kapasi. The narrator explicitly dictates all of the tour guide’s thoughts about his now-tedious marriage with his wife, how they are not the perfect match; then Mr. Kapasi thinks about how there also seems to be a lack of devotion between the two Dases. Throughout the rest of the story, Mr. Kapasi concentrates on Mrs. Das and trying to spend some time alone with her to continue their “friendship.” He becomes incredibly anxious about his appearance, about whether he has written the correct address, about his proximity to her, and, most of all, about pleasing her. It is ironic that Mr. Kapasi spends so much of his energy on gratifying Mrs. Das, because she really doesn’t want him for sex or even for making her husband jealous. Mr. Kapasi’s career as an interpreter is an ironic aspect of the story, because he utterly misinterprets Mrs. Das’s actions and motive.

I read this story twice. After each time that I read the story, there was always something bothering me, something that lingered hours after I read the story. As I was walking into school Friday morning (the day the reading was due), it suddenly occurred to me what the issue was: Mr. Kapasi. I detested him. Firstly, he reminded me of someone I know, someone who had an extramarital affair. Secondly, his desperation in getting alone time with Mrs. Das is both extremely pathetic and downright immoral. Marriage, and life for that matter, will always be a roller coaster with its ups and its downs. No matter how fast, how slow, or what direction the roller coaster is headed, you are on that roller coaster with your spouse and have made a promise to stay on it for good, ignoring any and all distractions. (562 words)

The Insightful Bones

At the beginning of the summer, I faced the difficulty of deciding which book I would read for my required reading. There were so many well-known authors and novels from which to choose. Ultimately I selected four of the nine available books: A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Lovely Bones, Old School, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Aside from Pride and Prejudice, I read five other free-reading books, including Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper and Stephenie Meyer’s four novels from the Twilight Saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn).

Once I settled on reading as many novels from the list as possible, and as soon as I returned from Africa, I began reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. I was struck by the somewhat depressing and morbid tale of two very different women caught in the middle of Afghanistan’s most troubling times. All the death and despair left me with feelings of anguish and sadness that the characters bore throughout the novel. Even the rare moments of optimism, such as Tariq’s reappearance, were not enough for me to feel hopeful about a pleasant and conclusive ending. Fortunately the pieces of the puzzle came together with a positive outlook for the future. Nonetheless, the novel’s gloom stuck with me as I began The Lovely Bones.

I’m not sure what I was thinking when I started this book considering this novel’s focal point is Susie Salmon’s death and the chain of events following her murder. Strangely enough however, The Lovely Bones did not seem for me as macabre as A Thousand Splendid Suns. Sure, there were definitely some moments when I felt compassion for Susie’s family, particularly for her father. I can vividly recall how I felt as he went to hunt and kill Mr. Harvey in the cornfield and instead found Clarissa and Brian. I wish I could have been there when some people “saw” Susie standing beside them. I began to cheer for the family as they slowly but surely salvaged their lives, their relationships, and their happiness. There were goose bumps on my arms as I pored through the moments of Susie’s return to Earth, and I felt nothing less than blissfully happy for her. Admittedly, I wish that there could have been more justice served to Mr. Harvey, but it is a sad fact that many child molesters and murderers go unpunished.

What interested me most about The Lovely Bones are the novel’s convincing portrayal of human emotions and its ethereal and spiritual quality. I found the novel highly appealing because of the family dynamics throughout the story. Lindsey is very much obligated to step up and be the big sister to Buckley, and, in doing so, she matures rapidly. Both her mother and father become absent. Jack becomes obsessive about Susie’s murder and Mr. Harvey. Consequently, Abigail becomes distant from Jack and the rest of the family as she has an affair with Len Fenerman. Although I cannot condone what Abigail did, I could understand how she just wanted to avoid feeling the pain from her daughter’s death. The characters I most related to were Lindsey and Buckley. Lindsey grows up, and Buckley, as a very young kid, has to deal with very abnormal circumstances that he should not have to face. In the end, the entire family is able to reach some sort of healthy catharsis, and I felt very relieved and satisfied at the novel’s end (much more so than after A Thousand Splendid Suns).

It is, I believe, undoubtedly unusual for an author to write from the perspective of a deceased rape/murder victim. Susie Salmon, however, is not cynical, obnoxious, or moody like most teenagers are. Her death seems to be a catalyst for her emotional and personal maturity. Her family’s pain becomes her own pain, as she turns her back on Earth to avoid watching Brian beat up her father. Susie herself becomes so incredibly involved with the life on Earth that her wish to return to be with Ray Singh is granted. Even though this is a purely fictional novel, after I finished reading it, I found myself wondering if perhaps it is possible that we see our deceased loved ones around us in rare moments of our lives. Is the heaven Susie describes possible; does that kind of heaven exist? Obviously, we will never know for sure until it is our turn to move on, but the possibilities are endless. (744)