Common Themes and Characters in Lovely Bones and Six Feet Under

The novel TheLovely Bones by Alice Sebold and the television show Six Feet Under, directed by Alan Ball, share much in common, especially among the characters, as each deals with the subject of death. The personalities and character traits of the various characters change as they each deal with the subject of death in their own way. In Six Feet Under, the characters are faced with the murder of a gay man named Mark Foster and a character named Billy is who mentally ill while in The Lovely Bones, the murder of a young girl named Susie impacts a wide range of people including her family and the killer, George Harvey.

In The Lovely Bones, George Harvey is a serial rapist and killer who has killed Susie, a young girl at fourteen years of age. George Harvey, as Alice Sebold explains, was affected during in his childhood by his mother who killed three men after they tried to rape her as well as his father's expulsion of Harvey's mother from the family. These series of events led Harvey to hate all women. His deep emotional attachment to his victims, as shown by the items he keeps from them, is similar to Billy's deep emotional attachment to his sister Brenda. Billy suffers from mood swings and is mentally imbalanced. Both characters also have a desire to cause harm which stems from their uncontrollable rage. Billy threatens Brenda' boyfriend Nate with a knife as well as Brenda's last boyfriend Trevor while George Harvey takes his rage out on the young and old women he meets by raping and murdering them. Both characters are also affected by their past. During Billy's lifetime, he was a gifted photographer and Harvey was a gifted sculptor and builder. However, their differences are seen in their expression of rage. Billy is angry and emotionally unstable when he threatens Brenda and her boyfriends while George Harvey seems to be calm and collected when he murders his victims. His actions are thought out carefully as evidenced by his careful burying of his victim's bodies.

The other set of characters who are similar in personality are Abagail, the mother in TheLovely Bones and Brenda, Billy's sister in Six Feet Under. Both characters exhibit an attitude of despair and nonexistence in the lives of their families. Abagail goes into a total state of shock when it is discovered that her daughter Susie is murdered. She has a lack of passion and emotion and craves having an affair with another man so that she can become emotionally separated and run away from her family. Brenda, on the other hand, seems to be losing control of her world. When her brother Billy breaks into her house and Brenda finds pictures that he has taken of her and her boyfriend Nate, Brenda tries to kick her brother out of the house. However, it is this loss of control which Brenda suffers in her relationship with her unstable brother which leads to pushing herself away from her boyfriend. Brenda cannot comprehend the fact that she must have her brother committed to a hospital.