Symbol of Empty Jail Cell in The Lovely Bones Essay Sample

We as a group chose our monument to be an empty jail cell. This monument will represent the various amount of times that Mr. Harvey has not been caught for all the rapes or murders he has committed in the past before Susie. In the book, we read about multiple girls that Mr. Harvey has either raped, killed, and or hurt in some way. Mr. Harvey is yet to be caught. We feel that an empty jail cell will symbolize the lack of effort and motivation that police officers put into solving murders and crimes. If one person is capable of doing wrongful things and is never caught, that proves the lack of investigation taking place for multiple situations.

First off, our group decided to represent this particular injustice because not only does it take place in our book, but it takes place all over the world every day. Many criminals get away with wrongful things all the time. This could be prevented if police officers were willing to take the initiative, and put more time and effort into actually finding out who did it, instead of coming to a stopping point just because there isn’t enough evidence to go off of. We feel that taking a stand to represent this monument is important in order to address this ongoing issue.

The jail cell monument relates to our novel because a certain character in the novel, Mr. Harvey has yet to be placed in jail, nor receiving the consequences that he deserves. Instead, this character is allowed to live free in the world. Mr. Harvey has committed a wrongful crime and has gotten away with it not just once, but multiple times, without being caught. Therefore, this character will probably continue to do the wrong thing again. Mr. Harvey is yet to be put behind bars therefore, we feel that this is due to the lack of effort the police officers in our book have put into finding Susie's killer. There is a grieving family who’s daughter has been murdered. This is all because the investigators don’t have enough evidence to go on, and refuse to go out and try to find anything more.

Lastly, we as a group have decided that we would place this monument in front of a police station located in Hisley, Louisiana. Our group chose this place because they have the highest case rates in the U.S. From the research we have done we can assume that most of those cases remain unsolved due to the lack of time and effort that police officers choose to put into figuring out what happened to the victims. Placing this monument in front of the Hisley, Louisiana police station will make the police officers exceedingly aware of the many unsolved cases. As well as be a reminder to those officers who took an oath when they made the decision to join the force.