Lessons from the Dead: Thematic Similarities of The Lovely Bones and “The Sixth Sense”

The elements of death and dying have been explored in a variety of different ways through literature and film.  More specifically these two mediums have delved into the thematic pattern of the intricate connection between death and life.  The novel, The Lovely Bones, and the movie, “The Sixth Sense”, each serve to portray the relationship between the living and the dead.  The Lovely Bones achieves this through the eyes of a young girl peering down from her heaven onto those left behind on earth while “The Sixth Sense” uses the psychology of a young boy who has the unique ability to communicate with the dead.  Though “The Sixth Sense” differs from The Lovely Bones in that it falls more in the genre of psychological thriller, each work depicts the impact the dead has on the living through the themes of grief, acceptance, good versus evil, and the presence of an afterlife.     

The presence of the afterlife and the idea that “ghosts” have unfinished business is the strongest thematic element that occurs in both works.  The Lovely Bones follows fourteen year old Susie Salmon as she gazes down on her family and friends from “her” heaven. Susie’s life was cut short when she was raped, murdered, and dismembered.  In her heaven, Susie refuses to let her family and friends go.  She follows them through the years, watching them constantly as they live on without her.  Her unfinished business comes from the fact that her killer’s identity and her dismembered body were never found, and that her life was stopped ever so abruptly disabling her from experiencing the transformation from child to adulthood.  As she wanders in heaven she seeks to communicate with the living as to the whereabouts of her bones and murderer and she yearns to be back on earth.  Susie continuously immerses herself in feeling the grief experienced by her friends and family.  As a result, those on earth are constantly surrounded by her presence and at times she has succeeded in making an appearance, through touch, a breeze, the entrance in someone’s body, or a slight vision seen by her youngest sibling.  As Susie’s soul rushes away from earth during her process of dying she grazes by Ruth, a classmate she barely knew.  As a result, Ruth is overtaken by Susie’s presence lurking in the air and comes to know her, but only through her death.  Later, Ruth’s life becomes driven by the dead, as she is constantly overwhelmed with images of those whose lives were taken by tragedy.  To Susie and those in her heaven, Ruth is idolized and described as a celebrity.

Ruth’s connection to the dead and their unfinished business is similar to that of nine year old Cole Sear, the protagonist of “The Sixth Sense”. Troubled Cole lives in constant fear as he has been experiencing disturbing situations he can’t fully understand.  Cole then meets Malcolm, a child psychiatrist who was shot by a former disturbed patient.  Cole comes to trust Malcolm, whom we later learn is a ghost, and reveals to him that he can “see dead people” but that the ghosts don’t always know that they are dead.  Like Susie, the ghosts have unfinished business and they seek to use Cole’s unique ability of communication to help them become at peace.  Through Malcolm’s guidance, Cole finally talks to one of the ghosts, a young girl who has appeared numerously.  Upon speaking with her, Cole finds out that she was kept ill and poisoned to death by her stepmother, a truth that is subsequently found out by her father.  Susie’s longing to communicate with earth mirrors that of the ghosts invading Cole’s peace of mind.  Though Ruth is not the primary character of The Lovely Bones, she plays a role parallel to Cole in that she provides the link between the living and the unfinished dead.  This role becomes more evident when Susie is able to bring herself to enter Ruth’s body so that she may commune with Ray, whom she is romantically linked, thus enabling her to make a true connection to the living as do the ghosts of “The Sixth Sense”.

Further following the role of having unfinished business is Malcolm.  In the beginning of the film, Malcolm is shot by his former patient, Vincent Grey, who commits suicide because he failed to understand and help him.  When Malcolm meets Cole he realizes that he is very similar to Vincent in the way he is troubled.  His success in his eventual understanding of Cole helps Malcolm rectify his failure to understand Vincent.  Cole, in turn, is able to help Malcolm recognize and accept his own death, ultimately allowing him to be free and leave behind the world of the living.     

The aspects of grief, healing, love and acceptance are other themes that connect The Lovely Bones to “The Sixth Sense”.  Susie can only watch in horror as her family devolves from a functional system to into a dysfunctional shadow of its former self (Womack).  Her mother drifts apart from the family, engaging in an affair then actually leaving, attempting to run away from her emotions.  Her father, on the other hand, tries to face the tragedy head on, obsessing on finding the murderer and retreating to himself in mourning.  Susie’s youngest brother, Buckley, never fully understood her death and as a result retreats into and angry silence and isolates himself after being abandoned by his mother.  Susie’s thirteen year old sister, Lindsey, is the strongest in holding herself together but seeks to not be defined by Susie’s murder.  As Susie watches she herself struggles to come to terms with the fact that she will always remain fourteen years old and as a result lives vicariously through Lindsey’s growing up experiences.

Love and acceptance are what bring the Salmon family back together.  The farther they move away from each other the more they realize they need to turn around and move back to help each other move on. With acceptance comes the act of healing. The novel ends with the finding of Susie’s lost charm bracelet ten years later and her mother gazing down at it saying, “This little girl’s all grown up by now” (Sebold, 328) signifying her own acceptance and recovery.

In “The Sixth Sense”, Malcolm’s wife, Anna, is overtaken with the grief brought on by Malcolm’s death, though it is not known that he is actually dead until the end of the film.  Every time Malcolm and Anna are shown together, they are seen as a struggling couple, drifting apart and lacking in communication with sadness overwhelming their faces.  Finally, the truth is revealed in a particular scene where Anna is shown crying as she watches a tape of their wedding and Malcolm comes to the sad realization that he is in fact dead.  His denial of his own death is an aspect of grief and it is only when he finally accepts the truth, with Cole’s help, that he can be truly at peace and allow his wife to heal and ultimately move on with her life . 

A final theme that is evident throughout “The Sixth Sense” and The Lovely Bones, is good versus evil.  In “The Sixth Sense” evil is taken on in the form of fear.  Cole is at first living in fear as he is constantly threatened by the spirits’ visitations.  He frequently takes refuge in the nearby church, allowing it to become his sanctuary.  Malcolm further explains to Cole that churches are sanctuaries that “protect us from bad people”.  This causes Cole to create his own sanctuary, a red tent complete with iconic figures of Jesus and the saints, which he retreats to throughout the film.  The play with shadow and light is also symbolic of good and evil. Director, M. Night Shyamalan constantly uses scenes depicting shadow, representing evil and death, countered with light, symbolic of God and good.  As Cole comes to understand his ability and becomes less fearful the presence of shadow and light becomes less and less.

In The Lovely Bones, Susie’s murderer, Mr. Harvey, is no doubt symbolic of evil while her family and community represent ultimate innocence and goodness.  The extent of his evilness is also discussed throughout the book as the reader finds out that he has murdered several other young girls and his motives are never made clear.  The theme of good versus evil also involves how the Salmon family deals with the evil that has been perpetrated upon them and Susie.  Instead of retreating into bitterness for the rest of their lives they allow goodness to come out of it. This is what is described as the ‘lovely bones’.  As Susie puts it, “These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections- sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent- that had happened after I was gone” (Sebold, 320).

Deaths leave unspeakable voids in lives that the progress of time and the erosion of memory render ever more vexing and inconsolable with each passing day (Womack).  Throughout history, works of literature and film have strived to reflect the yearning that people have to seek out their lost loved one.  Though these two works could not be more different, The Lovely Bones and “The Sixth Sense” succeeds in putting this element into perspective while exploring a variety of different themes. 

 But why does death always seem to be projected through tragedy rather than through someone who dies of natural causes at a ripe old age?  Perhaps this comes from the fact that we, the living, are left to ponder the what ifs of those whose lives were taken away all too quickly.  We simply cannot accept that they, the dead, were finished living.  We wish for a last word and these desires are what the film and novel strive to portray.  These two mediums provide comfort for our desires and becomes an outlet for the questions that remain unanswered thus, allowing the dead to, perhaps, live once more.         

               Sources:

Sebold, Alice.  The Lovely Bones. Black Bay Books/ Little, Brown and Company.  New York, 2002

“The Sixth Sense”.  Hollywood Pictures.  1999  

Womack, Kenneth. "'My Name Was Salmon, Like the Fish': Understanding Death, Grief, and Redemption in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones." Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.