Participation #2 ( The Lovely Bones)

Pg: introduction.
Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, "Dont worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world."


This quote appears at the beginning of the novel. After reading the novel I now realize what the quote means. I think this quote means that Susie is trapped. Susie is trapped in a heaven that she imagines. She cannot talk to her parents or friends but she can see them instead. She wishes that she followed her instincts and had left the hole Mr. Harvey made. Susie can't deal with the fact that she's not with her family anymore, and that her friends have moved on. In a sense Susie relates to the penguin in the first page of the story because everything else in Susie's world is also trapped. Like the items around the penguin in the snow globe, Susie too is surrounded by others in heaven. Susie worried that the penguin was alone, and often felt alone in heaven as well.