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What comes to mind when thinking about the phrase “ghost” stories? For many interested in items of pop culture, the visual interpretations of ghost stories that capture the horror and psychological thrilling motives like the movies Poltergeist, The Ring, or Paranormal Activity often find mention. These movies gain viewers because they lend a reference that demonstrates both their ability to become infamously loved and also make people terrified. Many of these same people also love these “ghost” stories because of their explanations of what happens to someone’s spirit after they die. The various interpretations offer a vast expanse of discussion on ghosts in media. The haunting of these spirits within movies may work well to scare people, but what about ghost stories in print?
Ruth Y. Jenkins writes, “Authors have long woven supernatural elements into their fiction for a variety of reasons: to heighten suspense, enhance setting, or complicate plot,” (61) and it is clear that she is on the right track. Much like those who discuss visual media, the ideas about printed fictional works presented by critics like Jenkins shares a similar perspective. These literary critics often turn toward the famed works of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw as works revered for their use of the ghost within literature.
The works of Shakespeare and James both offer commentary and investigation into how the ghost finds representation in literature. Each work is also tremendously important because they handle the ghost character of the traditional literary realm in ways that are familiar to readers and critics alike through uses similar to Jenkins’s reference. Shakespeare’s ghost clearly provides the spark n...
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...ons, the Hungry Ghosts are searching for gratification for old unfulfilled needs whose time has passed” (28). Although the hungry ghost was originally a religious concept for many, it has seeped itself into literature by authors of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist lifestyles. It has also become relevant in the works of Asian American authors who balanced between their Asian cultural roots and their American westernized lifestyles. Suddenly the world had Maxine Hong Kingston making the use of the hungry ghost simple in her memoir, The Woman Warrior, and Amy Tan finding a complexity within a few of her novels.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Ruth Y. “Authorizing Female Voice and Experience: Ghosts and Spirits in Kingston’s
The Woman Warrior and Allende’s The House of the Spirits.” MELUS Intertextualities
19.3 (Autumn, 1994): 61-73. JSTOR. Web. 13 October 2009.
Ghost- a vision of a dead person that is believed to appear or become visible to the living as a vague image. There have been many cases in reality where one sees the ghost of their deceased loved ones or encounter some sort of paranormal activity in their life. “Proof” by David Auburn plays around with the “Ghost story” in his play to represent identity, memory of Catherine.
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...
The existence of the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw has always been in debate. Instead of directly discussing whether the ghosts are real or not, this essay will focus on the reliability of the governess, the narrator of the story. After making a close examination of her state of mind while she is at Bly, readers of The Turn of the Screw will have many more clues to ponder again and to decide to what extent the governess can be believed. While critics like Heilman argue that there are problems with the interpretation that the governess was psychopathic, textual evidence incorporated with scientific research show that the governess did go through a period of psychical disorder that caused her insomnia, out of which she created hallucinations.
Like all the best ghost stories, this begins with the most innocuous of introductions: “…life is complicated”, a quote by Patricia Williams that Gordon will remind us repeatedly is “the most important theoretical statement of our time” (3). What obscures, obfuscates, thwarts and yes, haunts us and our work, she argues, is not what is seen but what isn’t, the notable absences out of the corner of our trained eye, those ghosts who may be invisible (especially to the discourse) yet still exact attention from their hidden presence. Perhaps anticipating the confusion of my book’s previous reader, Gordon patiently (and poetically) expands on her conceptualization – ghosts are those whom, through the “complicated relationship between reality and its mode of production” (11) have been relegated to that void between the s...
Watson, Robert N. 1990. 'Giving up the Ghost in a World of Decay: Hamlet, Revenge and Denial.' Renaissance Drama 21:199-223.
Next I want to introduce to you The Banshee. The Banshee is believed to be ghost woman seen mostly in Irish Folklore. The Banshee is depicted "in Various versions which have been described, from a woman with long, red hair and very pale skin to an older woman with stringy, gray hair, rotten teeth and fiery red eyes.” (darksang.com)
After reading 'The Turn of the Screw';, by Henry James, I was left with many unanswered questions. The two main questions are, are the ghosts in the story real, or are they just figments of the narrator's imagination? When I read though the essays of criticism, I took a stand on one particular argument. I took a stand that supports the argument that the ghosts are real.
Paranormal activity better known as parapsychology is a non-fictional idea. Parapsychology is the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known physical laws of nature. (Teresi, 2000) The Society of Psychical Research was established in London in 1882 (Teresi, 2000). Major parapsychological studies had not begun appearing in mainstream scientific journals until the sixties and early seventies (Teresi, 2000).“Furthermore, groups such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) which publishes the Skeptical Inquirer and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) have been formed to disseminate credible information on the paranormal. Credibility should be less of a problem in the future” (Teresi, 2000).
Watson, Robert N. 1990. 'Giving up the Ghost in a World of Decay: Hamlet, Revenge and Denial.' Renaissance Drama 21:199-223.
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...
... "The Woman Warrior as a Search for Ghosts", Sato examines Kingston's symbolic use of the ghost figure as a means of approaching the dramatic structure of the text and appreciating its thematic search for identity amidst an often-paradoxical bicultural setting.
The Nelly Butler hauntings is referred to as the first recorded ghost story in American history (LiBrizzi 5), and possibly the most exciting hauntings to date as there are still many unsolved mysteries. The apparition appeared on more than 30 separate occasions to over 100 witnesses in Sullivan, Maine, just over fifteen years after the American Revolution (5-6). Although the Nelly Butler apparition is one of the most convincing ghosts of all time, it was subject to suspicions of fraud. These claims turn out to be groundless as the evidence reveals the ghost to be genuine.
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...
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped
Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a complex and ambiguous public exploration of key human experiences surrounding the aspects of revenge, betrayal and corruption. The Elizabethan play is focused centrally on the ghost’s reoccurring appearance as a symbol of death and disruption to the chain of being in the state of Denmark. The imagery of death and uncertainty has a direct impact on Hamlet’s state of mind as he struggles to search for the truth on his quest for revenge as he switches between his two incompatible values of his Christian codes of honour and humanist beliefs which come into direct conflict. The deterioration of the diseased state is aligned with his detached relationship with all women as a result of Gertrude’s betrayal to King Hamlet which makes Hamlet question his very existence and the need to restore the natural order of kings. Hamlet has endured the test of time as it still identifies with a modern audience through the dramatized issues concerning every human’s critical self and is a representation of their own experience of the bewildering human condition, as Hamlet struggles to pursuit justice as a result of an unwise desire for revenge.