The Lovely Bones

by

Alice Sebold

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One of Susie Salmon’s classmates. A rebel, a feminist, and a loner, Ruth Connors excels in art and poetry but her adult sensibilities often land her in trouble with her teachers. Susie and Ruth had just begun a tentative friendship in the weeks before Susie’s murder, and as Susie’s soul ascends to heaven, she passes by Ruth Connors, forever changing the course of Ruth’s life. Ruth becomes obsessed not just with Susie, but with the plight of murdered women everywhere, and seeks to hone her “second sight” when she moves to New York City after high school graduation, attempting to investigate and write about the lives of murdered girls and women. On a visit home nearly ten years after Susie’s death—to oversee the closing of the sinkhole on the edge of town—Ruth and Ray Singh, who had had an extended dalliance in high school inspired by their mutual obsession with Susie, reconnect with one another, and take a trip out to the “mouth” of the Earth. When Ruth observes George Harvey’s car driving past the sinkhole, she experiences a vision of murdered women in long gowns stuffed in the back of Harvey’s car, and passes out. In this moment of cosmic transference, Ruth ascends to heaven, and Susie inhabits Ruth’s body. While Susie, in a fulfillment of her earthly desires, makes love to Ray, Ruth—up in heaven—receives the thanks and admiration of the women whose lives she has dedicated her own to understanding and, in a way, avenging. After Ruth and Susie switch back, Ruth finds herself transformed by the experience, and feels renewed in her life’s purpose of finding a way to convince the public of what she has always known: that the dead are all around, and that their souls are closer than we think.

Ruth Connors Quotes in The Lovely Bones

The The Lovely Bones quotes below are all either spoken by Ruth Connors or refer to Ruth Connors. 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:
Justice and Injustice Theme Icon
).
Snapshots Quotes

[Ruth] had become convinced that she had a second sight that no one else had. She didn’t know what she would do with it, save taking copious notes for the future, but she had grown unafraid. The world she saw of dead women and children had become as real to her as the world in which she lived.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Ruth Connors
Page Number: 227-228
Explanation and Analysis:

Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I'd had or imagined having, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on the topmost branch of the maple under which my brother had swallowed a stick and still played hide-and-seek with Nate, or I would perch on the railing of a stairwell in New York and wait for Ruth to pass near. I would study with Ray. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon of salty air with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his den. I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could trace how one thing—my death—connected these images to a single source. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was there watching.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Abigail Salmon, Buckley Salmon, Ruth Connors, Ray Singh, Nate
Related Symbols: Susie’s Photographs
Page Number: 230-231
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

When her father mentioned the sinkhole on the phone, Ruth was in the walk-in closet that she rented on First Avenue. She twirled the phone's long black cord around her wrist and arm and gave short, clipped answers of acknowledgment. The old woman that rented her the closet liked to listen in, so Ruth tried not to talk much on the phone. Later, from the street, she would call home collect and plan a visit. She had known she would make a pilgrimage to see it before the developers closed it up. Her fascination with places like the sinkhole was a secret she kept, as was my murder and our meeting in the faculty parking lot.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Ruth Connors
Related Symbols: The Sinkhole
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

And there she was again, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose to tell it, even to one person at a time.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Ruth Connors
Page Number: 321
Explanation and Analysis:
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Ruth Connors Quotes in The Lovely Bones

The The Lovely Bones quotes below are all either spoken by Ruth Connors or refer to Ruth Connors. 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:
Justice and Injustice Theme Icon
).
Snapshots Quotes

[Ruth] had become convinced that she had a second sight that no one else had. She didn’t know what she would do with it, save taking copious notes for the future, but she had grown unafraid. The world she saw of dead women and children had become as real to her as the world in which she lived.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Ruth Connors
Page Number: 227-228
Explanation and Analysis:

Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I'd had or imagined having, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on the topmost branch of the maple under which my brother had swallowed a stick and still played hide-and-seek with Nate, or I would perch on the railing of a stairwell in New York and wait for Ruth to pass near. I would study with Ray. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon of salty air with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his den. I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could trace how one thing—my death—connected these images to a single source. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was there watching.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Abigail Salmon, Buckley Salmon, Ruth Connors, Ray Singh, Nate
Related Symbols: Susie’s Photographs
Page Number: 230-231
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

When her father mentioned the sinkhole on the phone, Ruth was in the walk-in closet that she rented on First Avenue. She twirled the phone's long black cord around her wrist and arm and gave short, clipped answers of acknowledgment. The old woman that rented her the closet liked to listen in, so Ruth tried not to talk much on the phone. Later, from the street, she would call home collect and plan a visit. She had known she would make a pilgrimage to see it before the developers closed it up. Her fascination with places like the sinkhole was a secret she kept, as was my murder and our meeting in the faculty parking lot.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Ruth Connors
Related Symbols: The Sinkhole
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

And there she was again, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose to tell it, even to one person at a time.

Related Characters: Susie Salmon (speaker), Ruth Connors
Page Number: 321
Explanation and Analysis: