The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, not only explores the pain that emerges in the characters, but also uses important metaphors and points of view to allow the reader to feel sympathy towards the characters who have just suffered a loss. There are specific stages of grief. They reflect the common reactions people have when trying to make sense of a loss. An important part of the healing process is experiencing and accepting the feelings that come with the loss. In The Lovely Bones we can identify three main phases: denial, anger or depression and acceptance. Denial occurs immediately after the event, in which the individual suffers from conflicting feelings that control him and do not allow him to move forward. People in denial have not faced the real truth; they don't want to believe it happened. After denial the individual suffers from anger and/or depression where he becomes angry about what happened and who caused the event. Eventually, the affected person settles into acceptance, where he realizes that he cannot reverse time or change events (Villaneda). Sebold's use of metaphors and point of view represents the denial stage of pain within the characters in the story. the name was Salmon, like the fish; name, Susie.”(Salmon, 320). Here the fish represents Susie in such a way that she too is trapped in an in-between world, like the fish is trapped in a bowl. He can see everything from the inside but no one can actually recognize his presence. “The only sound I made after that was the faint tinkling of bells” (Salmon, 5). This represents, from her point of view, the fact that she is still trying to escape from Mr. Harvey and doesn't really want to admit that she is helpless in this... middle of paper... ... bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I had seen as this miraculous body was my life." (Salmon, 320). This is the most significant quote in this novel. The lovely bones represent his corpse that unified the family. After this terrible loss, all they needed was each other and Susie's death accomplished that. This reflects Susie's final acceptance of his death. In conclusion, the loss of a loved one and the stages of grief accumulate as a progressive and dominant theme in The Lovely Bones. You witness the emotional roller coaster the characters have gone through and their heartbreaking trauma. Loss and grief run throughout the story, but what makes the book special is the thought that the dead need to let go of the living just as the living need to redeem themselves from their losses..