Abstract Alice Sebold is an American famous writer. She is regarded as “the most promising writer” by the media. The Lovely Bones is her first novel，and it gains a great both popular and critical success. In this book, the application of image approach is a highlight. From the perspective of image, this thesis chooses four images which are bracelet, icicle, and ships in bottles and houses, aiming to analyze these images in details and discuss the important role they play in the development of the plot, the portrayal of characters and the revelation of the theme. It reveals two realistic significance that these images in this book convey—forgiveness and rebirth. 62042

Key words: images; The Lovely Bones; Alice Sebold

摘要艾丽斯·西伯德是美国著名作家，被媒体誉为“最具潜力的作家”。她的小说处女作《可爱的骨头》受到了大众与评论界的一致好评。意象手法的运用可谓是该书一大亮点。本文从意象角度出发选取了四个意象进行分析，分别是：手链、冰锥、玻璃瓶帆船和房子，探讨它们在情节的发展、人物的刻画以及主题的揭示方面所起的重要作用，并揭示了意象在此小说中所传达的两个现实意义，即宽恕与重生。

毕业论文关键词：意象；《可爱的骨头》 ；艾丽斯·西尔伯德

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Images in The Lovely Bones 4

3.1 Susie’s Bracelet 4

3.2 Icicle 5

3.3 Ships in Bottles 6

3.4 Houses 7

4. The Significance of the Images in The Lovely Bones 9

4.1 Forgiveness 9

4.2 Rebirth 10

5. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction 

Alice Sebold, the famous American writer, was born on September 6，1963 in Madison, Wisconsin. When she was a little girl, she lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her family, where her father taught Spanish at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania, in 1980. In the early hours of May 8, 1981, she was just a freshman at Syracuse University. During that time, something unfortunate happened to her: she was raped while walking home through a park off campus. Her attacker dragged her into a tunnel and brutally raped her, urinated on her, and beat her heavily. Although she reported the crime to the police, and the police took her deposition and investigated, there was no evidence to identify any suspects. Her poor experience has deeply influenced her own literary creation, as well as rape has gradually become one of her major concerns in her works. 

Alice Sebold went back home to Pennsylvania for several months before returning to Syracuse to finish her bachelor’s degree and study writing. On October 5，1981，when she walked down a street near the Syracuse campus, she recognized the rapist at one sight. She at once informed police and finally testified against the attacker in court. The case lasted for five months. The rapist was sentenced to eight to twenty-five years. Now the rapist is out of prison, but Sebold has not kept track of his whereabouts.

Later she attended the University of Huston for her master’s degree, but she did not finish the study. Then she moved to Manhattan for another ten years. In order to pursue her writing career, she did a lot of waitressing jobs. She did enjoy writing poems. What she would like best to do was writing her own experiences in the form of poetry. At that time, however, none of her poems or novels came to fruition. She was very upset about it, and became addicted to heroin. She admitted that she just took drugs for two years and she thanked to this special experience which enriched her creation. Eventually she obtained an MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 1998. She has published three books successfully: Lucky (1999), The Lovely Bones (2002), and The Almost Moon (2007). In 1999, the experience of being raped was written by her as her autobiography and was published successfully, the miserable memory and the penetrating topic created a stir in society. The autobiography is called Lucky, thus she was considered to be the most promising writer at that time.