#858 There Isn’t Any Ghost- Lucas Southworth

#858 There Isn’t Any Ghost- Lucas Southworth

A child in a wheelchair and his parents are moving into their new home. It is an old house, run-down, and a little creepy. It is a haunted house of sorts, but we’re not sure exactly what it is haunted by. We know some tragedy occurred and the family has moved to get a new start. 

“I brought him to this place to find out if he’s done what he’s accused of doing, and I am determined to keep him here until he tells me or I can trick him into telling me.” 

The story is told by both the boy and the mother. As the house is being worked on by contractors (literally being rebuilt from the inside and then stripping the old one away like shedding skin), the mother tries to scare the boy and the boy tries to remember. The boy was accused of pushing a little girl down a well, nobody is sure if he did it. They are now living in this purgatory until their new house is ready.

Notable Passage: “A ghost is not inconsequential…It’s a history of the bad things we have done.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man…and I am supposed to have armed myself with enough science to laugh indulgently at the ways of my people.”

That opening paragraph of Ghosts, is a common theme of this collection. The older educated class of Nigeria battling old culture with new, African vs. the west, etc.  Both proud of living through war and corruption to better their families and lamenting the erosion of their heritage, even the narrator’s name, James Nwoye represents this dichotomy.

James is a retired professor, a widower, a father and a grandfather of children not born in Nigeria and losing their native tongue in just one generation. He runs into a man he thought long dead, and they share the tales of the past years.  Although not friends during the war years, they have too much in common to harbor bad feelings.

“He had forgotten [his wife’s] name and yet, somehow, he was capable of mourning her, or perhaps he was mourning a time immersed in possibilities.” Ikenna was “a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.”

In retirement, James holds onto connections of his past, and the old ways despite the manner in which he lived his life, educated, well-traveled, progressive: “We are the educated ones, taught to keep tightly rigid our boundaries of what is considered real.” The ghost of his wife visits him often.

Word of the day: Harmattan – A dry dusty easterly or north easterly wind on the west African Coast occurring from December to February

Notable Passage: “It is our diffidence about the afterlife that leads us to religion.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31