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Student Name
Prof. Evan Peterson
English 101
Date
This paper earned an A minus. I think it's excellent for 101 level writing. Notice that the
focus is on a single character. The thesis focuses on the character Abigail, and the only reason
this earned the "minus" is that the paper occasionally strays from the thesis in its efforts to
compare the book to the film. Enjoy, and see what you can "steal."
Not Just A Mother
As I read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, I desperately wanted to find an underlying
crisis from the main character, and narrator, Suzanne "Susie" Salmon. I had hoped to find an
interesting parallel comparing the living and the dead, particularly the struggle of the recent dead
fighting to let go of their past life and to ultimately move on. My determination nearly blinded
me to the real struggle in the book, which wasn’t with Susie, but rather with her mother Abigail.
With the loss of her daughter, Abigail began questioning her place in the world; was she a
mother, a teacher, a lover? These questions, among others, go unanswered in both the book and
the film. It seems that Abigail’s search for her place in the world goes completely unaddressed in
the film altogether. Despite Abigail’s absence from a leading role in the film, she is undoubtedly
a main character in the book.
The Lovely Bones is set in Pennsylvania in the 1970’s. Early into the book, Susie Salmon,
age 14, is raped and murdered by her neighbor. After she is killed, Susie leaves the living world
and enters her "Heaven" which is actually more accurately her purgatory. She watches her
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family, murderer, and friends go on without her, or at least try to. It is no secret who murders
Susie, or where her body is hidden; she answers these questions almost immediately. In the book
Susie seems content where she is. Of course she misses her family but she doesn’t seem to regret
the fact that she is dead. Susie imagines how her life may have been, but by her description
Heaven is beautiful, and she doesn’t lament what she can’t change. I found comfort in this
approach to the main character. Sebold made death seem very relaxed and go-with-the-flow
where as the director of the movie, Peter Jackson, added more stress to Susie’s situation and her
purgatory had scenes of ugliness. The tragedy of losing her daughter is where Abigail begins to
unravel.
As a young woman, she had fought to go far in school and had earned a masters degree in
English. Abigail's mother, Grandma Lynn, had not supported her efforts to become an educated
woman. Lynn was old fashioned and believed that women should make a beautiful home and let
the man of the family do the thinking. Abigail had planned to go on and earn her PhD when she
became pregnant with Susie. From there on out she was strictly a mother. In the book, Abigail
struggles with this assumed position. The dream to be an educator was put to the wayside as she
stayed at home and raised her children.
Alice Sebold spends more time developing Abigail's character than Peter Jackson does.
In the book I could feel the turmoil that Abigail was feeling. I could understand her grief. I felt
that in the film version she was portrayed as impatient. When she left her home in the movie to
go to California, it wasn’t because she was soul searching; it was because she was tired of her
death obsessed husband. I saw frustration in the film, when I didn’t sense that in the book. Plus,
the only hint of the past life of Abigail Salmon was in the opening scenes of the movie.
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As the movie began, Abigail was in bed with her nose buried in a book. She was
surrounded on all sides by books, the bookshelves were full, and the night stand was stacked
high with thick, text-style books. As the camera panned around slight set change took place and
focus was brought to the book that Abigail was reading. The cover of the book changed from a
school text to a book about becoming a mother. That was the end of her story. For the rest of the
movie she appeared to be a frigid housewife. It was disappointing that this was how her character
was portrayed when the struggles were so much more important in the book. To give some credit
to the movie producer, Abigail was by no means the main focus of the overall story, and it would
have drawn away from the film to make her role that detailed.
In the book, after Susie’s murder, Abigail became detached from her family. She could
no longer communicate with her husband, and she lost interest in her two living children. After
being only a wife and mother for 14 years, Abigail had given up on her own dreams. At this
point Abigail became immersed in the books around her, from her college years, and eventually
became so detached from her family she didn't know how to communicate with her children or
husband anymore. In a sense it seemed that Abigail had tried to be a mother, and in her eyes, she
had failed when she lost her little girl. Since parenting wasn't meant to be for her, she then
picked her life back up where it had left off 14 years earlier. Lost in the world, Abigail packed
her bags and abandoned her family in the middle of the night. She got in her car and drove till
she ended up at a winery in California. Not quite what she had dreamt of, but she was working
on finding herself, and the winery was peaceful and simple enough to do that.
Just like in most book-turned-movie situations, I liked the book much more. A talented
author must show so much detail to be able to set the scene for the reader and spark their
imagination. For example, in the book, there was important detail placed on a nickname that
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Abigail's husband had giver her: Ocean Eyes. The name represented Abigail's depth. Susie
couldn't understand where the name had come from until she caught her mother sitting on the
porch one morning at dawn, gazing off into the distance. The rest of the family hadn’t awoken
yet and Susie was able to see Abigail before she had donned the Mom costume for the day. She
appeared to be deep in thought, in some other place. That was when Susie began to realize that
her mother craved more out of life, and this was the introduction to Abigail's struggles. From my
observation, the nickname was left out of the movie. Even if it had been used, the detail would
have been lost on the viewer if there weren't an elaborate back story to explain the meaning.
I appreciate movies for helping my imagination when I am otherwise unable to picture
specific details in a book. Two scenes come to mind in which I was unable to vividly picture
what Sebold was describing. One was the underground room built in the cornfield where Susie
lost her life; the other was Susie’s Heaven. It’s a possibility that the descriptive words were
beyond my vocabulary, or it was the fact that I had never encountered anything like either of
these places to form a picture in my mind. When I saw the cornfield underground room I was
able to think "okay, I see, I understand her amazement now." As I read, I was a confused as to
why Susie was so impressed by a hole dug in the cornfield that was specifically meant to lure her
in and provide shelter for her killer. The second scene was Susie’s Heaven, which was computer
generated imagery. It was presented similarly to the way a dream may be shown in other movies.
There were parts of Heaven that were beautiful and it was impressive to see, but Peter Jackson
took too much liberty changing Heaven to be his creation instead of Sebold’s. Jackson’s
interpretation of Heaven had dark, frightening instances where Sebold had created more of an
unimaginable paradise.
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Despite the differences between print and film that are ultimately inevitable, I will
probably forever go to see movies made from books that I have read. I will, expectedly, leave
these movies disappointed, but thankful to be able to better picture the world of the characters
that I had become immersed in. Since I had read the book before seeing the movie, and had
chosen to focus on Abigail for the purpose of this paper, I developed expectations in preparation
for seeing the film. My hopes were squashed early on when I realized that Abigail wasn’t a
leading role, merely a supporting character, and the questions of who she was remained
unanswered.