Susie’s Double Traumas: A Psychological Study of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36586/jcl.2.2026.0.54.0088Keywords:
The Lovely Bones, Susie, Double Traumas, the Psychological Approach, Alice SeboldAbstract
This paper, “Susie’s double traumas: A psychological study of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold,” focuses on recurrent universal issues, which are rape and rape trauma. American writer Alice Sebold, who suffered such trauma, wrote The Lovely Bones in 2002 to address this dilemma. Susie, the novel's fourteen-year-old protagonist, lived happily with her family before the tragic day when Mr. Harvey violated her and murdered her to escape legal consequences. The study concludes, through a qualitative deductive psychological approach, specifically Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, that Susie suffered from two double traumas: rape trauma and murder trauma. Fortunately, she copes with both traumas separately and successfully, aided by the love of her family and the support of her companions in heaven. This highlights the importance of emotional support for rape victims during the healing journey.
References
Ahmad, S. (2023). A narrative structure analysis of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 31(1), 383–400. https://doi.org/10.47836/pjssh.31.1.20
Ahmad, S., & Nadarajan, S. (2020, April). Thought presentation in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Journal of Language and Literature, 20(1), 70–79. https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.v20i1.2252
Anam, Z., & Istiani, I. (2021, March). Sexuality and monogamy: Unearthing melodrama formula in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Journal Joepallt, 9(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.35194/jj.v9i1.1212
Dianika, R. A. (2019, March). Mr. George Harvey’s shadow archetype as seen in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Dinamika: Journal Sastra dan Budaya, 6(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.25139/dinamika.v6i2.1618
Fransisca, C., Natsir, M., & Muhajir, F. (2021, October). Emotion and conflict in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones novel. JBSSB, 5(4), 670–680. https://e- journals.unmul.ac.id/index.php/JBSSB/article/view/4265
Gladwin, P. J., & Sugany, M. J. (2022, November). Psychological trauma and grievance in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. International Journal of Novel Research and Development, 7(11), 139–142. https://www.ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRDB001038.pdf
Glaug, N. C. (2008, Spring). Alice Sebold. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, The Pennsylvania State University. https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Sebold__Alice
Kiaei, S., & Safdari, M. (2014, April). Hyper-reality in Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies, 2(2), 53–58. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.2n.2p.53
Kilby, J. (2018, April). Saving the girl: A creative reading of Alice Sebold’s Lucky and The Lovely Bones. Feminist Theory, 19(3), 323–343. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700117752773
Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2014). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss (Reprint ed.). Scribner.
McShane, J. G. B. (2007, Fall). Beyond death: A conversation with Alice Sebold. Weber State University Journal, 24(1). https://www.weber.edu/weberjournal/journalarchives/archived/vol241/aseboldconv.html#top
Nisrina, N., & Hadiyanto, H. (2021, November). Lindsey Salmon’s mourning process in facing sister’s death in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Culturalistics: Journal of Cultural, Literary, and Linguistic Studies, 5(2), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.14710/culturalistics.v5i2.12481
Opreanu, L. (2016, January). Text and trauma in Sophie’s Choice, The Virgin Suicides and The Lovely Bones: Remapping identity in a country of strangers. In A. Ciugureanu, L. Martanovschi, & N. Stanca (Eds.), (Im)Migration Patterns: Displacement and Relocation in Contemporary America (pp. 125–140). Institute European. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313656167
Sebold, A. (2002). The Lovely Bones. Little, Brown and Company.
Snoddy, A. (2014). Death and dying in adolescent literature (Master’s thesis). Bowling Green State University. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odbetd/ws/sendfile/send?accession=bgsu1394210773&disposition=inline
Wehling-Giorgi, K. (2021, January). Unclaimed stories: Narrating sexual violence and the traumatized self in Elena Ferrante and Alice Sebold’s writings. MLN, 136(1), 118–142. https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2021.0007
Whitney, S. (2010, Fall). Uneasy lie the bones: Alice Sebold’s postfeminist gothic. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 2(2), 351–373. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tsw.2010.a461382
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Journal of the College of Languages (JCL)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
