Natasha Trethewey: Boo ! Ghosts

Boo! Ghosts are the most popular Halloween costumes with children. Perhaps the popularity comes from the idea that children like hiding their true identity, a fascination that will continue into adulthood. In Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey is a half white and half black woman who has trouble incorporating her black heritage into her life therefore missing a piece of her identity. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, characters described as a phantom or shade indicates missing or different identities. In The Circle by Dave Eggers, the employees live through what the circle tells and have no original ideas which stems from their missing identity. Ghosts are the soul of a once living person, but they are incomplete in that they are missing

The Civil War divided the United States, which most people try to forget. Although Americans would like to pretend that slavery and inequality never happened in the United States, the unjust actions continue as a part of history and are represented from “ the fields of cotton, hallowed ground- as slave legend goes-each boll holding the ghosts of generations” according to Trethewey’s poem “South” (45). Each boll holds a spirit which represents the black people who had to endure the hardships of slavery. Together they help create the United States historical identity. While she visited her parent’s home state of Mississippi, she visits museums about the civil war and stays in an old fashioned inn that had probably been around since the civil war. In her poem “Pilgrimage” Trethewey is deep in sleep at the inn “the ghost of history lies down beside me, rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm” (20). The ghost is trying to show Tretheway that she is a part of the history that she observed earlier in the day. Although she may sometimes try to hide that part of her identity, the ghost reminds her that she cannot hide from her family’s history in Mississippi. Ironically, in “Native Guard”, Trethewey uses the term “phantom

Kurtz left a heavy impact on many people but especially on Marlow as he claims “he shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness” (Conrad 49). Marlow will always remember Kurtz and the difference in the way that Kurtz acted in Africa and how Kurtz’s intended portrayed him when he lived in England. Anybody can change identities if the environment around them encourages the change which is exactly what Kurtz did until the end of his life. Kurtz changed his identity in Africa because he became obsessed with work and finding ivory. Kurtz placed more value on his work in the Africa than his morals he learned in England, which makes sense since society puts a high value on work. People lose the sympathetic and emotional side of their identity for their work.Their old identity becomes ghostlike and a new identity that is brought out from the environment replaces the old identity . As for Kurtz’s intended, instead of finding out the truth about Kurtz and his actions in Africa, she decides trust Kurtz’s word that he is helping the