Summary
Begins by describing summer camp (a symposium); a residential break for tied and talented students from Susie’s old high school. Ruth, Lindsey and Samuel all attend. The competition is a how to commit the perfect murder competition which leads the attendees to think about Susie’s murder. Susie then compares her often lonely and confusing heaven with the state of her old friend’s lives on earth; she also gets involved with the ‘perfect murder’ competition and shares that an icicle is the best weapon because it melts.
Point of view: representation of sexuality (AO1, AO2, AO3)
Adolescence and sexuality are discussed in this chapter which forms a clear contrast with Susie’s own experience of sex; her own memory of sex is brutally violent. Lindsey and Samuel are in a blossoming relationship and are moving through the adolescent rites of passage; Lindsey views the pressure of expectation for sex as something that she wants to get ‘over with’ so she can feel like an adult. Lindsey loses her virginity during the symposium break at the same age that Susie was when she died; Susie never had the opportunity to to fulfil this rite of passage as hers is liked to the brutality of her death. Sebold uses an extended metaphor to describe Ruth’s needs to disappear inside the women that she idolises as a kind of flowering.
How does Ruth’s mother react to her new-found vegetarianism?
Ruth’s mother refuses to accommodate to her vegetarianism.
Why does Lindsey flinch when Ruth mentions her last name?
Lindsey replies with ‘please dont’ which mirrors Susie’s cries for help to Mr Harvey during her murder. Ruth knows Lindsey but Lindsey barely knows Ruth and as she is a very distant character she doesn’t want to form relationships with people who had a connection with Susie due to her grief.
