I just read The Lovely Bones and one of the questions I am going to answer is, was justice served? I do not think world justice was served, only personal justice to Susie (the main characters) family. In the book, a fourteen year old girl named Susie gets raped and killed and the story is told from her in heaven watching over her family members react to her death and deal with it in their own way. Like I was saying, in the long sense justice isn't served. Susie's body is never found, only her elbow and part of her necklace and hat. Although her rapist Mr. Harvey dies, it is many years later and no one finds out until much later in time.
Even though in the long sense justice isn't served, Susie's family throughout the book grieves for her until the end, where they can finally find calmness. They feel relieved at last that Susie can now rest in peace, and they feel the burden of her death go away. They will never forget her, but they will also feel better when they remember her.
The whole book is told through Susie's eyes, even though she is dead and in heaven. Heaven, what Susie thinks is,"different for everyone, yet some merge into mine and others." In the book, heaven is portrayed through what most people think today. A happy place, where you can get everything you want and can look over the one's you love. I think that although heaven is nice, it is showing the injustice of the people who died young, or were murdered. Susie's own personal justice is at first not served while she is in heaven, she feels lost and sad and even wanting vengeance for her death. All the people that die unwilling such as dying young feel that justice should be served when dead, and even everything in heaven won't soothe them because everything they want is to be alive again.
I feel that in some ways justice was served to everybody, but in a way it was served to nobody. Mr. Harvey never got arrested, Susie's family went through difficult family trouble that nearly split their family apart. But through it all, they all feel that their personal justice was served because they could let go of Susie. This made me think of questions about justice, can justice be served without the law and someone having to pay? Is personal justice really justice?
This is a really dark book, Tess. I thought that you summarized it well because it really gave me an idea of what the writing and story would be like. I think that the aouthor must have been really creative to make the main character or the storyteller dead. I thought that it was very interesting how you thought that justice was served to Susie, even though she was dead. But I do think that you are right. She probably enjoyed watching over her family. But even though justice was served to her, I am not quite jelous of her position. Great job Tess.
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