Lucky Alice Sebold Analysis

Lucky is a novel about author Alice Sebold’s journey through her life after being raped. In Sebold’s freshman year at Syracuse University, she is raped while walking through a park on her way home. In the book, she discusses her experience and how it affected her as a person. The reader watches Sebold grow as a person and change after the traumatic experience. The book focuses on the aftermath of her rape and her family’s reaction as well as the ongoing trial against her rapist. The story takes the reader through Alice’s life as she grows mentally and physically. This story is one of courage and determination. One main theme this novel focuses on is the effect rape has on those around the victim and the victim themselves. After Alice is raped
she goes through really dark times, she feels less beautiful and has a bad self-image. Her friend Tree becomes distant and is unable to accept the fact that it happens. Throughout the beginning of the book, Alice is very composed about the situation at hand, even immediately after raped she is able to calmly walk herself home. She feels treated differently by everyone around her, like they are tip toeing around her, like she has “changed in their eyes” (85). She kept considering herself different because all of a sudden people were paying attention to her as if she was a celebrity after being raped. She was just simply known as the “girl that got raped” (131). She did not feel normal and even with this newfound fame, Alice still feels like an outcast. All she could do was think of rape, and how it encircled her every aspect of life. This experience was such a big impact on her life and she would never be the same. At one point in the book she uses a metaphor to describe her experience; she uses fires to define how no matter how terrible they are “they seemed, inevitably, to mark change” (48) like her rape did to her life. And because of this, Alice seems to keep her head held high during the bulk of the book, even finding strength to look at her rapist in the eyes during her trial. Her teacher influences her to write poetry on her experience, this gives her an outlet to get her anger out on the man who did it and the situation itself. Alice becomes a much tougher person after being raped and shows her power through words and actions. Alice being raped not only takes a toll on her life, but also her family's lives.
The reader is able to view the way her traumatic experience affected each of them. Each reacts in their own way, her father not being able to understand what happened to her. He was so caught up in his own opinion,” thinking he understood the rules of the game” (82), that he did not show her sympathy like a father should. Thinking that the only way her rapist was able to rape her was if she let him, he was too close minded to understand. Alice’s mother, on the other hand, was fragile and that made Alice fearful of hurting her by telling her. Even Alice’s first thought is how to come up with a story so her mother would not find out; this is when the reader is able to identify the complications in the inner workings of her family. So a distance was established between Alice and her family from the beginning. Her mother does try to be strong for her daughter though even though at some points the topic being “uncomfortable” (94) for her to sit through, however she is unable to be there completely because of her illness. The reader learns Alice’s childhood consisted of a family that showed no affection towards one another. Her mother and father would never kiss and she always thought it was strange. She would then go and play games with her Barbie dolls and the dolls would have story-lines many children did not think about, like Ken and Barbie getting a divorce. The reason would always be because
Ken didn't touch. So after Alice is raped, her family still shows no affection towards her or each other, her family was not ever normal to her. Her father was awkward towards her, not being able to express his emotions towards her. Her sister is the only one who could actually show proper emotions towards the situation, crying over what happened to her after finding out. However, her family is able to come together eventually, to support her through the situation, to build her confidence and make her feel accepted.
Even though at the beginning of the book Sebold’s existence seems divided, Alice and her family realize that her life and her raped life would have to coexist.
There was no way to forget or make the experience disappear. Alice learned to live peacefully with two different realities and reach closure by the end of her trial. As time went on she was able to move on and learn from her experiences as a growing woman, while also having her family accept what she went through. There would always be change from that dreadful night but as time goes on life rebuilds
itself.