Kelso High School
English Department
Chapter Ten
In today’s lesson we will:
 Analyse chapter ten of the text in relation to:
plot
characterisation
theme: grief and loss
theme: Growing Up and Coming
of Age
theme : isolation
symbolism
Plot
 Discuss briefly with your partner the main
events of chapter ten.
 Check that your chapter summary notes
include all relevant information.
Discussion Point:
 “Unchaperoned, and with the heat of
the summer, something grew in them like
weeds. It was lust. I’d never felt it so
purely and see it move so hotly in
someone I knew.” (p.116)
 This is an important quotation – why?
Characterisation:Lindsey
 The last week of the symposium is always devoted to
a “better-mousetrap” competition. Lindsey and
Samuel are working together and Lindsey has even
caught field mice for the project. However, she
becomes concerned about killing them and wants
instead to build a little purple couch to put inside.
 After all, she thinks, it’s a better mousetrap they’re
building, not a better mouse death camp. Samuel
knows not to press Lindsey about the plan, because
he knows how difficult it is for her to deal with death
since Susie died.
Characterisation:Lindsey
 Lindsey still spends her time trying to stay in
control.
 Besides Susie, the only one who is aware of
Lindsey’s pain is Samuel. He realises her
pain when she nearly cracks over the new
competition of the perfect murder .
 He responds by offering the only thing he can
give her and which she will accept only from
him: his love.
Contrast: Lindsey and Susie
 Susie’s first sexual experience was so horrific
while Lindsey’s is so loving.
 “At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into
a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex
there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers
there were windows.” (p. 125)
Characterisation: Susie
 Susie’s envy of Lindsey’s first sexual
experience will prepare us for how she fulfills
her dream of having that same experience
later in the novel. Ruth’s obsession will also
prepare us for her role in Susie’s dream.
Characterisation: Susie
 “How to commit the perfect murder was
an old game in heaven. I always chose the
icicle: the weapon melts away.” (p. 125)
 This quote shows how Susie is basically a
very compassionate girl. She would choose
the icicle, because it wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Ironically, it’s the icicle that Susie uses to
frighten Mr. Harvey into falling into the ravine
where he dies.
Theme: Grief and Loss
 Susie is still finding it incredibly hard to adapt to the
fact that she is dead.
 In heaven, Susie admits that she is spending less
time in the gazebo, because she can still watch Earth
as she explores the fields of heaven.
 Some of the dead who live in her heaven, leave at
night and go to other heavens. She wonders what
they are like and realises she doesn’t fit in anywhere
else. She feels so solitary even there. She wonders
what the word heaven means and why she doesn’t
see her dead relatives, especially her father’s father,
who would dance with her. Then, she could feel only
joy and have no memory of the cornfield or her grave.
Theme: Grief and Loss
 Franny, her counsellor, tells her she can have
those things if she stops desiring certain
answers.
 Susie must stop “asking why you were killed
instead of someone else, stop investigating
the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering
what everyone left on Earth is feeling . . .
simply put, you have to give up Earth.”
Theme: Grief and Loss
 Franny’s advice to Susie about how to find
the heaven where she really belongs
indicates that Susie, like Ruth, has no idea
how to move on. She clings to life and won’t
face her death.
 She even tries at one point to step beyond
the boundaries of heaven and ends up with a
horrible headache, a sign that she no longer
belongs on Earth. Susie hasn’t yet figured this
out.
Theme: Grief and Loss
 At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me
into a place I’d never been. In the walls of
my sex there was horror and blood, in the
walls of hers there were windows.” (p. 125)
 This is such a poignant comment from Susie,
because it reflects one of the reasons why
she can’t let go of Earth: she has died as a
life unfulfilled.
Theme: Coming of Age
 The coming-of-age novel involves the
initiation of the protagonist into adulthood.
This initiation usually occurs through the
acquisition of knowledge and experience.
In many of these novels, the move into
adulthood includes a loss of innocence or the
destruction of a false sense of security.
Theme: Coming of Age
 The novel begins when Lindsey Salmon is
thirteen years old and ends almost ten years
later, with Lindsey as a wife and mother.
 It traces her move through the routines and
events of female adolescence—first kisses,
shaving of legs, makeup, summer camp, love,
friendship, college.
Theme: Coming of Age
 While Susie's death also hastens Lindsey's loss of
innocence, it does so less dramatically.
 Although Lindsey understands that her world is not
particularly safe, that bad people exist and that these
people do bad things, she still participates in the
normal rituals of growing up.
 Like many teenage girls, Lindsey experiments with
makeup and with finding a style that suits her. She
experiences a tender first kiss with Samuel, and they
move slowly through the rituals of courtship.
 She grows into her sexuality, developing a
relationship based on trust, gentleness, and
understanding.
Theme: Coming of Age
 The novel, however, also traces Susie's
coming of age.
By presenting the development of a dead girl
along with a living one, Sebold imbues the
experiences of growing up with enhanced
significance.
Susie cannot move on in death until she
finishes"growing up."
Theme: Coming of Age
 Susie's rape and murder hastens the process of
moving from innocence to experience for both girls.
 Susie learns her suburban and rather ordinary world
is not safe—men murder children in this world. She
moves swiftly and violently from innocence to
experience, and from idealism to realism.
 Yet this shift does not culminate in her "coming of
age;" rather, it initiates a need for her to experience
these things more slowly and more naturally.
Theme: Coming of Age
 However, Susie's murder, combined with her
mother's absence, pushes Lindsey into adult
roles early in her life.
 Sebold also contextualizes that experience.
In The Lovely Bones, illustrating that moving
from a place of innocence to one of
knowledge can occur violently and abruptly.
 In a broader sense adults come of age or
grow up too, especially Abigail.
Theme: Coming of Age
 Just as Lindsey must figure out how to grow up—
what it means to live, Susie must figure out what it
means not to grow up—what it means to be dead.
 She learns that like the living, she, too, must journey.
Susie also learns that the dead, like the living, must
let go, not easy for a girl who wants so desperately to
live.
Symbolism: The Icicle
“How to commit the perfect murder was an old
game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the
weapon melts away.” (p. 125)
 This quote shows how Susie is basically a very
compassionate girl. She would choose the icicle,
because it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Ironically, it’s the
icicle that Susie uses to frighten Mr. Harvey into
falling into the ravine where he dies.
 The Icicle
In reality, it is only frozen water that can eventually
melt away. To Susie, it’s a softer way to die. For Mr.
Harvey, it is death itself.
Symbolism: “The Perfect Murder”
 The competition theme directly relates to
Susie's death because it seems to be the
world in which they're all living, in which a
perfect murder (Susie’s) has happened.
 It also foreshadows Harvey’s death.
The End!