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Grandma Lynn
Susie’s murderer is a solitary, strange man who lives in a green house just down the street from the Salmon family. His brutal rape and murder of Susie Salmon instantly paints him as the novel’s incontrovertible and irredeemable antagonist, and as he evades the suspicions of neighbors and law officials alike, the reader is made to feel as helpless as Susie herself feels up in heaven, removed from the ability to influence those she loves toward seeing Harvey as not just odd and lonely but actually evil. As the months go by and Harvey’s odd behavior catches the eye of the Salmon family, Jack begins to suspect him of Susie’s murder, and starts attempting to compile evidence against him—but there is seemingly nothing to link him to Susie. Lindsey realizes that perhaps her father’s hunch is more than just that, and she herself breaks into George Harvey’s house over a year after Susie’s murder. She retrieves an important piece of evidence—a sketch from Harvey’s notebook depicting the underground structure in the cornfield in which Susie was murdered—but Harvey explains this evidence away as the tearful, guilt-ridden attempt of a concerned neighbor to understand a horrible atrocity. Nevertheless, Harvey knows the police will soon be onto him, and he flees Norristown to go on the lam. In flashbacks, it is revealed that Harvey had a strange and difficult childhood—his mother, a kleptomaniac, frequently used him as a tool in her serial thefts and, eventually, was either forced into the desert by her husband, or fled of her own accord. Harvey, as an adult, has killed upwards of six girls and women, preferring younger teens and small children. As he hides up and down the Northeast Corridor, being pursued all the while by police, Harvey occasionally returns to Norristown to check up on his old house and neighborhood. Eventually he attempts to kill again, but is thwarted when an icicle falls on him, knocking him off balance and tipping him forward into an icy ravine. Harvey’s arc deals with themes of justice and injustice, isolation, community, and desire. In the end, while he is not brought to justice by the law, a kind of cosmic justice is indeed served—and it is heavily implied that Susie Salmon, who in games of “How to Commit the Perfect Murder” always chose an icicle as her weapon, may have had a hand in Harvey’s just desserts.
George Harvey Quotes in The Lovely Bones
The The Lovely Bones quotes below are all either spoken by George Harvey or refer to George Harvey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. My murderer believed in old-fashioned things like eggshells and coffee grounds, which he said his own mother had used. My father came home smiling, making jokes about how the man's garden might be beautiful but it would stink to high heaven once a heat wave hit.
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Chapter 21
Quotes
While he scanned the windows of my old house and wondered where the other members of my family were—whether my father's leg still made him hobble—I saw the final vestiges of the animals and the women taking leave of Mr. Harvey’s house. They struggled forward together. He knew he could not outrace them. He sat in his car and prepared the last vestiges of the face he had been giving authorities for decades—the face of a bland man they might pity or despise but never blame. As the officer pulled alongside him, the women slipped in the [car] windows and the cats curled around his ankles.
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George Harvey Quotes in The Lovely Bones
The The Lovely Bones quotes below are all either spoken by George Harvey or refer to George Harvey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. My murderer believed in old-fashioned things like eggshells and coffee grounds, which he said his own mother had used. My father came home smiling, making jokes about how the man's garden might be beautiful but it would stink to high heaven once a heat wave hit.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21
Quotes
While he scanned the windows of my old house and wondered where the other members of my family were—whether my father's leg still made him hobble—I saw the final vestiges of the animals and the women taking leave of Mr. Harvey’s house. They struggled forward together. He knew he could not outrace them. He sat in his car and prepared the last vestiges of the face he had been giving authorities for decades—the face of a bland man they might pity or despise but never blame. As the officer pulled alongside him, the women slipped in the [car] windows and the cats curled around his ankles.
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