Does Mr Harvey get caught in the Lovely Bones

About Character[]

George Harvey is a sadistic serial killer known for raping and murdering at least seven girls. He eventually gets killed by falling off a steep hill after trying to lure another girl into his car.

Early Life and Death[]

He tells us some of what she sees. We learn that his mother was a desperate woman who taught Harvey to shoplift and even rob victims of roadside fatalities from alongside the road. At one point Harvey's father abandons his mother in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. His family, before and after his mother disappears from it, seems pretty transient.

As a kid, Harvey is ashamed that his father doesn't have a 'normal' job. He can't tell people that his father "[works] in the desert [building] shacks of broken glass and old wood" (8.3). Still, his father passes along his knowledge of building to his son. We can see that Harvey's father is an abusive person, but are not provided with details.

We can say, with certainty, that Harvey's childhood was almost the complete opposite of Susie's. In Harvey, we see a yearning for an idealized home, and family, in his chosen profession: building dollhouses, idealised homes in miniature. His success gives him what his father's building couldn't, financial security. Harvey makes enough to buy that family home in the suburbs but does not have any intention of filling it with a family of his own. Rather, it becomes the disguise that allows him to infiltrate the world he covets.

There are lots of allusions to Othello in the novel. Othello, unlike Harvey, is a largely sympathetic character, whose jealousy is fanned by the evil Iago, until he allows it to overcome him, and he murders his beloved wife. Since none of the other characters in The Lovely Bones exhibit jealousy or murderous tendencies, we can think of the allusions as clues pointing to jealousy as a motivator for Harvey's hideous behavior. He can't have the idealised, loving home and family, so he builds structures that let him infiltrate and attack it.

After Mr. George Harvey got rid of Susie's body by dumping it down a big sinkhole and filling it with cement, about six months later, George Harvey tried to encounter another young woman named Clair by saying that he will take the girl wherever she wanted to go. Clair said that she was not interested, he then responded by saying that it is not safe for a young lady to be walking around in the cold like that, she then fired back at him saying "piss off". George Harvey was in shock. A large icicle then falls on his shoulder and as he tries to shake it off, he ends up falling down the ravine and he broke his back and neck on a tree, killing him instantly and brutally.

Known victims[]

• Sophia Cichetti
• Jackie Meyer
• Leah Fox
• Lana Johnson
• Flora Hernandez
• Denise Le Ang
• Susie Salmon

"I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" Susie tells the reader (Sebold, 2002, p.5). In Alice Sebold's novel "The Lovely Bones", Mr. Harvey brutally rapes and murders Susie Salmon and is never caught. It is essential to the central themes of the novel that Mr. Harvey is never caught. This is because the book, with a few dramatic exceptions, zeroes in on the intangibles surrounding Susie's death, such as the way in which those close to Susie grieve and the new relationships that form around her death. Catching Harvey would make the novel a mere murder mystery and diminish the importance of the characters' journeys in the wake of Susie's death.

Although Mr. Harvey is haphazardly killed when an icicle hits him in the head and knocks him into a ditch, only Susie and the reader know this; none of the living characters receive any satisfaction from it.

In fact, Harvey never suffers, is never punished, and never has to answer for what he has done to Susie and many other girls. When asked by an interviewer why she doesn't make it a point of her story that Harvey is caught, Sebold says, "Catching a murderer or criminal can help, but there are so many books that make that the point of the story that in books that's the easy way out, as opposed to, 'what are the characters feeling? What's their real journey?'" (Recorded Books, 2002). Sebold does not want to write the common murder case story but wants to focus on in-depth descriptions of her characters' struggles to move on in the wake of Susie's death. With a few exciting exceptions, Sebold chooses to focus on the characters' individual experiences rather than catching and punishing Harvey.

Yes, Susie possesses Ruth's body...

Do they find out Mr Harvey killed Susie?

How did they find out Mr Harvey killed Susie?

Is Mr Harvey caught?