In The Name Of Love

As one of the newly-rising stars in American literature in the 21 st century, Alice Sebold published her first and most representative novel The Lovely Bones in 2002 which immediately created a great sensation and received much critical praise.The Lovely Bones is about a normal fourteen years old girl, Susie Salmon, who was raped, murdered and even dismembered by her neighbor. However, being a soul in the Heaven, Susie has the right to look down the earth, watching how her living families try to cope with her death. Although this novel tells a story about a terrifying murder of a teenage girl, it is not a thriller of horror or fear. By depicting how these different characters face up to the losing of family member, the author shows the change of the Salmon family and eulogizes the family affection and love.This paper would give a reinterpretation of the characters in The Lovely Bones from the perspective of Jungian analytical psychology. By means of theoretical analysis of different characters and their extreme response in facing up to the loss of family member, this paper intends to explain the reasons behind their behavior,indicating the understandability of their overreaction. And through the explanation of the individuation of the three main characters, this paper would present its theme: love can heal the wounds of a soul, and this healing power of love is what Jungian analytical psychology advocates inside the collective unconscious.Therefore, different from most of the existing theses which prefer to focus on one single character, this paper, through Jungian analytical psychology, intends to present a systematic analysis of the three main characters of Salmon family, excavate the reasons behind their behavior and reinforce the theme of the healing power of love. In this sense,this paper hopes to provide a new perspective to analyze and understand this novel.