In our lives, there are always intentions to justify our actions. Simply put, why do we have to attend English classes when we can already speak and write? Obviously, the reason is to master the skills of writing a good argument, which we expect to learn in English classes. The bottom line here is that everything we do has a purpose. This applies even to different genres of literature; in the ghost stories genre, authors attempt to scare, teach moral lessons or entertain through their writings. Every ghost story has its own significant purpose. As for the ghost story, “The Open Window”, Saki deliberately replaces ghosts with a human character, who manipulates truths in order to prove the ultimate danger of the unpredictability of human behavior. In a ghost story, as the genre itself suggests, readers would expect the presence of a ghost especially since the author includes tropes of a conventional ghost story. In “The Open Window”, Saki uses the isolation element when he mentions that one of the main characters Framton migrated to a rural retreat (595), which can be assumed to be a secluded area. This is a common cliché that one would suppose in a ghost story. Also, the “ghost” incident that scared Framton occurred at twilight, which is a trope as well because ghosts normally appear when it gets dark. This increases the believability of the story as a ghost story. However, Saki deliberately replaces the ghosts with a human character, who manipulates truths instead. Despite all the tropes, there was no ghost in the story actually. Vera, the lying human character decided to make up a story about her “dead” uncle and aunt’s brothers, who would walk through this large French window, which was always kept open (595). It was said, “Ro... ... middle of paper ... ...readers understand that ghost stories cannot be trusted. This is crucial because it is dangerous for readers to innocently believe in everything they see or read. Saki’s purpose of replacing ghosts with a human character, who manipulates truths to prove the ultimate danger of the unpredictability of human behavior was evident throughout his story “The Open Window”. Even though it was only a short story, Saki managed to convey his purpose well, thus making this story a meaningful read. Works Cited Goldstein, Diane E. “Scientific Rationalism and Supernatural Experience Narratives.” Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore. Ed. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2007. 60-78. Saki. “The Open Window.” The Big Book of Ghost Stories. Ed. Otto Penzler. New York: Vintage Books, 2012. 594-597.
"New Mexico: Ghost Stories and Haunted Places." Haunted New Mexico. Retrieved 5 Apr 2005 http://hauntednewmexico.tripod.com/id1.html.
... that the story is representative of how all ghosts behave. Society prefers to consider ghosts as “protectors” or “helpers” rather than as “frighteners” or “killers.”
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James continues to stir up an immense amount of controversy for such a short novel. Making a definite, educated decision on the actual truth considering the countless inquiries that develop while reading this story proves more difficult than winning a presidential election. That being understood, taking one particular side on any argument from a close reading of the story seems impossible, because the counter argument appears just as conceivable. Any side of the controversy remains equally disputable considerably supported by textual evidence from the novel. One issue which, like the rest, can be answered in more than one ways is why Mrs. Grose believes the Governess when she tells her about her ghost encounters. Usually one would second-guess such outlandish stories as the ones that the governess shares throughout the story, yet Mrs. Grose is very quick to believe our borderline-insane narrator. One of the explanations for such behavior could be the underlying fact that Mrs. Grose and the governess have a similar socio-economic background, therefore making them somewhat equals even if the governess does not always seem to think that way. This fact makes them susceptible to trusting and believing each other, and to believing that the ghosts are there, for the people that the ghosts are presenting used to be servants and therefore from a similar socio-economic background. To add on to that, Bruce Robbins proposes in his Marxist criticism of The Turn of the Screw that the idea of a ghost is synonymous to that of a servant, subconsciously making the two lower-class workers of Bly more vulnerable to believe that the ghosts were real; in other words, servants we...
There has been many ghost stories told over the years, but the same question remains… are ghosts real or not? The book Ruined, by Paula Morris, is inspired by the history and culture of New Orleans. Fifteen year old Rebecca, is suddenly shipped off to New Orleans, a year after hurricane Katrina. She is forced to go there when her dad leaves for a business trip in China for six months.
Discussions about possessions interest me, or maybe it’s discussion about ghosts that interest me. I have read a few Japanese ghost stories that sent me running for the hills. It didn’t help some of those stories were animated at times, adding another creepy element beside the stories themselves. I hoped for a good, scary from reading Spirits of the Hanged. Before discussing the tale, I wanted to talk about the little prelude pertaining to Yuan Ch’an. This prelude is nice and ironic but also reminded me of The Horse Mountain Ghost (THMG). It’s practically the same thing with a different background/context. I found that pretty funny that the stories end with the creature saying, “I am a (demon, ghost, thing )” then they change into the creature they described. One last comment, the mentioning of “the worst” type of ghost being people who hanged themselves. This chapter talks about how the women are “ill-treated” which I wanted to say how obviously there should be a fairy tale or some kind of adaptation based on
...l evidence that the ‘ghosts' exist and no other witnesses. Although we only have the governesses word, her rational account of the events is convincing, especially when she suggests herself, that her suspicious behaviour and paranoia do seem absurd, and even insane in the normal course of things. It is only as the story draws to a close and the children's disconcerting behaviour can be seen as a reaction to the governess's own actions, that her story loses conviction. There obviously were inappropriate goings on at Bly before she came, and the uncle's aversion to any involvement with the children is strange, creating a mysterious aura around the story. But it is James' clever ambiguity throughout the whole novel that makes it impossible in the end to say for sure whether the ghosts were real or whether it was an allegorical tale about the corruption of innocence.
The word “ghost” originates from the Aged English word “gast,” and its synonyms are “soul, spirit [good or bad spirit], existence, breath,” and “demon” (etymonline.com). In the book, The Woman Warrior, that is, ironically, subtitled as Memoirs of a Girlhood Amid Ghosts, the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, uses the word “ghost” as a metaphor to typify her confusion concerning discovering a difference amid reality and unreality – the difference that divides her American present that prefers and her Chinese past that her mother, Valiant Orchid, filters into her mind across talk-stories that steadily daunt her to cross her established bounds. Ghosts, in the book, change reliant on point of view. Anybody whose deeds deviates from what is satisfactory in one area is a ghost according to the associates of that society. To Chinese people, like Valiant Orchid, Americans are ghosts. On the supplementary hand, Chinese are ghosts according to Chinese-Americans (including Kingston, who finds her past loaded alongside frightening Chinese ghosts). For Kingston, Ghosts, however, are not always scary; in fact, a little of them enthuse...
Chinese culture has many interpretations ghosts. One way they are seen as is people who have disgraced their family or country. An example of this in the novel is Maxine's aunt. She is considered a ghost because she disgraced her family by having a baby outside of marriage. They call her "Ghost! Dead ghost! Ghost! You have never been born." (Kinston 14) She drowns herself in the well to become one of the most feared ghost, the Shui Gui or watery ghost. These ghosts are said to be waiting for their victims, to pull them into the water to take the drowned ones place. In the novel another example of what the Chinese consider ghosts are American people. Sometimes they feel haunted by this unfamiliar culture, just as a ghost would haunt. "But America has been full of machines and ghosts- Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Trimming Ghosts, Five-and-Dime Ghosts." (Kong 96) These examples are American people of any ethnicity. They are called ghosts because the Chinese are not familiar with the culture. Another example of the unfamiliarity is when, "Her husband looked like one of the ghosts passing the car wind...
ghost come back to life, a random woman who came to fulfill the needs. of the protagonists, and the view of, does it really matter? These possibilities will be discussed throughout the duration of this essay. and it will be left to you to decide what you think. In the support of Beloved actually being the baby ghost re-born, you could use the fact.
One of the most critically discussed works in twentieth-century American literature, The Turn of the Screw has inspired a variety of critical interpretations since its publication in 1898. Until 1934, the book was considered a traditional ghost story. Edmund Wilson, however, soon challenged that view with his assertions that The Turn of the Screw is a psychological study of the unstable governess whose visions of ghosts are merely delusions. Wilson’s essay initiated a critical debate concerning the interpretation of the novel, which continues even today (Poupard 313). Speculation considering the truth of the events occurring in The Turn of the Screw depends greatly on the reader’s assessment of the reliability of the governess as a narrator. According to the “apparitionist” reader, the ghosts are real, the governess is reliable and of sound mind, and the children are corrupted by the ghosts. The “hallucinationist”, on the other hand, would claim the ghosts are illusions of the governess, who is an unreliable narrator, and possibly insane, and the children are not debased by the ghosts (Poupard 314). The purpose of this essay is to explore the “hallucinationist” view in order to support the assertion that the governess is an unreliable narrator. By examining the manner in which she guesses the unseen from the seen, traces the implication of things, and judges the whole piece by the pattern and so arrives at her conclusions, I will demonstrate that the governess is an unreliable narrator. From the beginning of The Turn of the Screw, the reader quickly becomes aware that the governess has an active imagination. Her very first night at Bly, for example, “[t]here had been a moment when [she] believed [she] recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when [she] found [herself] just consciously starting as at the passage, before [her] door, of a light footstep.” The governess herself acknowledges her active imagination in an early conversation with Mrs. Grose, when she discloses “how rather easily carried away” she is. Her need for visions and fantasies soon lead her to believe that apparitions are appearing to her. It is from this point on that she begins to guess the unseen from the seen, trace the implication of things, and judge the whole piece by the pattern. After the first appearance of Peter Quint, the governess begins to make infe...
room which is seen to have ghosts in it and, therefore, no one goes in
Cheung, Theresa. The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings. Element Encyclopedia Series. Unknown: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2008.
I personally disagree with the author W.W. Greg’s interpretation of Hamlet’s ghost, and believe that his assumption that Hamlet is simply hallucinating his father’s ghost is without merit. Many of W.W. Greg’s claims relate Hamlet to other plays that were written by Shakespeare, claiming that due to how Shakespeare portrayed ghosts in his previous works, it would follow that Hamlet also fits into the same mold as these past writings. W.W. Greg even states, “I should like to be told what Shakespeare's views were of ghosts in general ... I am forced to turn to Shakespeare's other plays for suggestions as to how he represented these phenomena” (Greg 395). W.W. Greg is simply claiming that trends in Shakespeare’s writings in the past logically must take the same form in the character of Hamlet’s ghost. This method of thinking simply does not hold up when examined critically, mainly due to the fact that there were multiple witnesses to the ghost, a...
In traditional and modern, ghost reflects death and fear, and it never change. In Hamlet, the ghost is a symbol of Hamlet’s father who is killed by Claudius. Its propose is to demand Hamlet to avenge its death. Although the ghost only appears three times in front of Hamlet, it is a specify role to develop the whole story and plot. Through Hamlet, the ghost is the motive to make Hamlet kill Claudius, and the ghost plays a critical role to influence Hamlet.
Wilder, Annie. "Chapter 10." House of Spirits and Whispers: The True Story of a Haunted House. Minnesota: Llewellyn Worldwide Limited,, 2005. . Print.