Yomari Hernandez

Lovely Bones Prompts and Reflection

Prompt 1
Q: Which character finds delight in the suffering of others?
Mr. Harvey finds delight in the suffering and killing of women and
children. It gives him pleasure to harm woment and children because
of his childhood. He blames his parents for everything that went wrong
in his life and his corruption, especially his mother. He says that being
a women or a child would be the worst thing to be. He justifies this
from his experience with his mother who shoplifted and made Harvey,
her son, help her in doing it. Harvey now associates women and
children as beings capable of evil. What he does not put into
consideration is the evil he does by killing even the most innocent
individuals who do not fit into his own stereotype of them.
Q: What is the positive fulfillment Harvey gets out of doing certain
actions and the outcomes that followed?
Harvey finds pleasure in holding the knife he used to kill Susie
and remembering how good it felt to kill her. In this case, he is
privately reliving the events of the murder and stuck dwelling on
Susies murder because he cannot kill anybody else in the area due to
the neighbors growing suspicions. Another quirk that Harvey has would
be having a bag of remembrance. He keeps a token from every single
one of his victims and stores in within his basement. The bad thing
about this is that the bag links him as the murderer to Susies murder
due to the found charm from her bracelet.
Q: Instances when vengeance is encountered?
The first instance was when Lindsey breaks into Harveys house
to find evidence of Susies murder for her father. This attempt is in vain
because she is almost caught by Harvey. He had called the cops right
after but almost gets arrested himself for not mentioning what it was
exactly that got stolen. The second instance was when Abigail, Susies
mother, was having the affair with Fennerman, the detective. She did
this because she felt like she was out of control and blames the whole
world for her problems. The vengeance is on the father and the world
in general because she is doing something morally wrong and knows it.
She ends up leaving the family and loses connection. Her running away
from her problems does not ultimately solve anything for anybody. The
third instance is when the icicle falls on Mr. Harvey. This instance ends
his life. This event was almost foreshadowed and can even be taken as

having happened due to some sort of supernatural influence from

Susie. Harveys death prevents any future murders from his wrath and
brings closure to all of his past victims.
Prompt 2
Q: Is the Salmon family real?
From beginning to end, the Salmon family is portrayed as a
typical mourning family in such a tragic circumstance. The author
made the characters react very real to ongoing occurrences. Based on
the situation, the characters would act logically. The little brother acted
as a typical small child in loss. He did not know the wholes tory be he
understood something was missing. The mom stressed and basically
ran away from her problems. The dad, Jack, was probably the most
realistic character because he wanted to go look for Susie frantically
and bring her killer to justice. Obviously he was limited in how much he
could investigate on his own because the police thought he was going
to far with his accusations and own private hunting. He ended up being
constrained and could not do all of his initial plans to investigate
because he had to take care of his family due to the mom running
away and being put in the hospital from being beat up from the teens
whom he had accidently came to. He did his best he could to raise his
children and fumbled around raising them. He messed up and worried
a lot like any dad would.
Prompt 3
Q: What lead Mr. Harney to become the monster he is today?
Mr. Harvey first started to show signs of a psychopath when his
mother ran over a man in an angry attempt to hit and run away from
the situation. He revealed his thoughts that he believed being a
woman or a child was the worst thing to be. There were three instances
where Harvey was clearly acting like a monster towards people. The
first was when Harvey started killing animals because he felt the need
to kill but he could not do it to people because people in the
neighborhood were becoming suspicious. The second obvious evidence
of Harveys monstrous nature is his passionate desire to kill women
and children. This shows his unforgiving nature towards his mother and
his resentment of women and children in general. He even hates to
hear the sound of happiness and laughter from them. The third
example of Mr. Harveys gruesome ways would be one of previous
killings. After escaping the neighborhood in order to not be seen as a
suspect in Susies case he went to Connecticut and goes to the place

where he had buried a waitress. Upon his arrival at the site, he notices
that the grave he had made years ago had been dug up. His
immediate reaction was that he had been compromised and he wanted
to after Lindsey again just to get revenge on the one person he had not
been able to harm previously. He blames just about everyone around
him for his problems instead of looking at himself and his intentions
are purely to kill to relieve the hatred he feels.
Prompt 4
Q: Which character has the greatest evolution as a human being?
The character whom I believed had the greatest evolution as an
individual would be Lindsey. She was a soft, quiet person when all her
family was together and happy. However after Susies death, she
becomes harder, she joins the soccer team and even finds love. Her
personality is more straightforward and almost has a desire to resist
convention. She learnt to deal with her state of tragedy different than a
lot of the characters and this is what set her apart from everyone since
she grew in this process. Even after becoming an adult, she turns into
the more rebellious type with Samuel. Through it all, however, she still
remains responsible towards her family.
Q: Which character has the least evolution as a human being?
The character that seemed to have had the least evolution as an
individual would be Mr. Harvey. He started out as ruthless killer and
ended up as a ruthless killer. He felt no need to change his ways
because he felt that his hatred towards women and children was
justified. He had chances to turn himself in or turn his life around
throughout the novel but he never did. His wrath and harmful
intentions did not end until he, himself, was killed by a fallen icicle.
Q: Relate the novel to the Human Experience
The novel is all about how a family reacts to a death and not
being able to find the body of their lost family member. The book
shows how each person reacted and changed during the plot after
Susies death and the string of events that followed. Susie gets to
watch her family from her personal heaven and sees everything that
happens on earth. She learns more about her family here than if she
had stayed alive because it is from heaven that she can see who the
people around her truly were in a time when it mattered most to keep
hope and love.

Reflection
1) This novel is definitely something students should be exposed to
because it portrays real life emotions and reactions to real life
events. Not every book taught in college has this type of
experiences and it is ok for the students to feel somewhat
uncomfortable because it is instinct to feel that way when
exposed to such gruesome thoughts brought by Mr. Harvey in the
book. It teaches the students of the different monsters of life,
whether it be psychopaths, deep depression, regrets, loneliness,
or the feeling of not being able to let go, and it makes the
readers aware to not react abruptly to such instinctual emotions.
Rather, it makes the reader want to not act like those in the book
and act more rationally.
2) The Lovely Bones shows good characters show how not everyone
is perfect yet they strive to accomplish as much justice as they
can even through their mishaps. Moral relativism is dangerous
because one person might think it is right to get rid of and kill
people they think are evil while others think it would be more
proper to bring evildoers to justice and have them serve their
time. Killing, of course, should never really be the answer in
revenge because in society we are taught that killing out of spite
is wrong no matter what the circumstance.
3) In my personal opinion, I think the idea of a persons personal
heaven is a pretty innovative and cool idea. I had always pictured
heaven to be somewhere where everyone shared their eternal
lives together so when we read about Susie being able to mold
her heaven, I thought it was pretty neat. I also thought that the
idea of someone being killed with an icicle as the best murder
was innovative because I would have never in my wildest dream
ever even thought of that as a weapon.
4) If I could tell the writer one thing to better the text, it would be to
organize the flashbacks and point of views a little better. There
would be times when I got a little confused because I would not
know if they were talking about Susie seeing from heaven or if
the point of view was just focused on earth.
5) I think its pretty interesting that I feel that I learned more about
the novel when we were doing the in-class prompts. I read the
book but I did not really piece it together as well as when we
talked about more specific instances and their consequences in
the discussions. Seeing the details in this light helped me to
better format my more in depth analysis when it came to
comparing the book to the classroom topic of the human
experience.