Po'Sandy

Po'Sandy is not so much a story about a haunting as it is a piece on morals. However, multiple points within the story relate directly to the psychology behind why Sandy continues to linger.

The story itself condemns slavery. It assumes the readers are educated white people, and brings them to the level of those who have suffered due to slavery. The lead narrator, Uncle Julius, enlightens an ignorant, young, white couple on the events surrounding a slave named Sandy, and why his spirit is still haunting the old schoolhouse the wife wants to tear down.

Sandy, wanting to escape his life as a slave, begs his wife, Tenie, to turn him into a tree. He chooses a tree, most likely, because they are strong and rooted to their location: Something Sandy has never had. As a slave, he is considered property, and can be bought and sold whenever his owners see fit. He has the same rights as an animal, if that, and suffers immensely because of this. Although he despises his life, he is still tied to it because of his wife. Thus, instead of choosing to be an animal that can wander and escape the life of slavery, he chooses a tree. This also reflects his inability to truly break free of being a slave: As a tree, he is bound to the area where he is planted, and at the mercy of the outside influences around him, similar to his life as a slave. Tenie transforms Sandy back and forth between a tree and man multiple times before Sandy, as a tree, is finally cut down and transformed into a tree house by the very slave owner he was trying to escape.

Uncle Julius uses this story to put the couple in a predicament: If they destroy the school house, which is made from the 'bones' of a slave, rather than donate it to the descendants of slaves, they are, in a rather roundabout way, almost as bad as the slave owner himself. It is also a way for Uncle Julius to gander sympathy from the couple, in the hopes that instead of tearing down the school house, they will donate it.

Sandy's story doesn't end there, however. He continues to haunt the school house as a very rowdy and upset ghost. He continues to exist because he is still trying to break free of his chains, although it is not something he can manage. His decision to be turned into a tree left him tied to slavery, and, brought about his end sooner than it might have otherwise happened. Instead of fleeing his life as a slave, because it was the only life he had known he chose a life similar to it. He also displays a major character flaw through his decisions: The person who suffers most through his decisions is not Sandy himself, but his wife. After the tree Sandy had been turned into was cut down, Tenie fell victim to her own grief, dying in the school house. Sandy not only condemned himself, but the person who cared about him the most.

So why does Sandy continue to haunt the school house? It is probably because he still cannot break free of slavery. Through the tragedies that befell himself and Tenie, he is even more attached to the school house.Sandy does not know a life outside of being bound by outside influences and, as such, is still bound to the area closest to his past life. He is angry because, although he wanted to escape his life as a slave, he could not in the end.

At the end of the story Uncle Julius has convinced the couple not to tear down the school house. Instead, they will donate it to Uncle Julius and his acquaintances, who will use it as a place of worship. Uncle Julius comments that if the spirit of Sandy begins to act up, the word of God will do him a bit of good. This suggest that, perhaps, upon achieving enlightenment Sandy may finally be able to break free of the chains that have, and still, tie him down.

Ghosts in relation to women.

A topic was brought up in a conversation on another blog about the relationship between women and their ability to sense ghosts. There are countless stories where a female character is more sensitive to the supernatural than the males present. Why is this?

My theory is that it is because women are the 'life givers' in nature. In most supernatural stories, there are usually details relating to reproduction. That is, water, confined spaces, ways of manifesting, etc. all relate to the womb. Women are tied more closely to the spiritual aspect of things, as it is from them that new life grows.

For example, when Beloved comes to physical existence, she appears out of water. Once she's made it to the shore, she leans against a tree, trying to gain control of her senses. She is, for all intents and purposes, just like a newborn child. One could also draw a parallel between the narrator at the end of The Yellow Wallpaper, who is in a reduced mental state and crawling around the room with a rope tied around her waist, to a newborn child who is unable to walk, and the rope could be compared to an umbilical cord.

Because of these ties, women are left more susceptible to the presence of ghosts. Men, who don't have the ability to labor through childbirth, are thus at a disadvantage.

Women being more prone to the supernatural is apparent in Water Ghosts. It is Corlissa who is visited by the spirits of the two deceased women. It is also apparent in The Giant Wisteria, where all of the woman, albeit a little less seriously, are witness to ghosts while their husbands are not. In Beloved, the people who interact with Beloved most closely are Sethe and Denver, and even Paul D has been stripped of most of his masculinity by the time he comes in contact with/through his contact with Beloved.  

The Yellow Wallpaper

Initially I wanted to avoid talking about this story, as I've said similar things about it before. But I think it fits well with the theme I've been following, and thus want to analyze it a bit.

The story starts off with a narrator who is most probably suffering from a form of depression, and living in a time where rest cures were thought to be effective. These coupled together make for a terrible mental state, whatever it may be classified as, and, subsequently, a 'haunting of the mind'.

The narrator's mental condition deteriorates throughout the story. At first she contemplates the wallpaper, and how it is slightly off-putting. She seems to convince herself that the room she is in is different from what it more than likely is, although we as readers will never know for sure, as the narrator is our only source of information and she is unreliable. The wallpaper is nothing more than an instigator for the narrator's decline.

As the narrator is left without any sort of creative outlet, her mind tries to find other ways to occupy itself. She is forced to spend the majority of her day sleeping or 'resting', and her access to any sort of entertainment is limited. She attempts to write down her thoughts, but as she has to hide that, also, she is left only with her own mind to wander through.

In the room, the wallpaper is the only other interesting aspect the narrator can focus on. Because she has nothing else, she allows her mind to focus intently on it, becoming even obsessed with it. Her lack of human contact, coupled in with her exclusion from creativity, causes her to latch on to anything she can. In her case, the wallpaper.

When her condition deteriorates further, she begins seeing things. This may be her mind attempting to find an 'out' of her isolation. That is, when people are isolated so thoroughly, they tend to start hallucinating and the mind creates a separate world for them to live in. This is much the same as the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper.

By the end of the story, the narrator has become so engulfed in her own imagination that she has detached herself from reality. She is unable to separate her hallucinations (the 'woman' in the wallpaper) with her own self. It is likely she created the image of the woman being trapped as a way to escape her, for lack of a better word, torture via rest cure. The woman is a reflection of herself, who cannot escape the prison put in place for her by others. The narrator then allows the mental image of this woman to break free, which is a longing the narrator herself has had -- to be free of the rest cure and allowed to live her life in the way she wants -- and lets it overtake her mind. If she can't be free in reality, she allows herself to lose her mind in order to escape that reality.

In the end, although The Yellow Wallpaper has a bit of ghostly element to it, it is a much more psychologically based work. The narrator, rather than being haunted by an outside being, is being haunted by herself. Everything she allows herself to see and feel are fueled by her own mind, rather than an outside existence acting on her.

Beloved

I wanted to analyze the psychology behind the presence of the character Beloved in the novel 'Beloved' by Toni Morrison. This novel is a bit different than short stories such as 'The Fall of the House of Usher' or 'The Yellow Wallpaper', as the character Beloved is an actual physical manifestation of a ghost.

Let's pretend for a moment that she's not. Instead, she is something along the lines of a mass hallucination. This will allow me to look at her from a different perspective, and analyze what she is to Sethe.

Sethe had managed to escape slavery, which was a trauma that would always be with her in scars, both physical and mental. She was treated like an animal, and when the schoolteacher showed up to try and reclaim her children, he even discussed her as if she were an animal. And in that situation, Sethe acted like an animal, allowing herself to fall victim to primal instincts. It is human nature to think ourselves different than animals, above them. Although we are, technically, animals, we try to separate ourselves from them.

Sethe, upon realizing the schoolteacher had come to reclaim her children as well as herself to be slaves, rushed her children out of the house and into a shed where she attempted to kill them, because she thought death would be better than slavery. Perhaps it would have been. But in allowing herself to become an animal, instead of throwing away her life and trying to escape elsewhere with her children, Sethe causes scars to herself, which she cannot escape. Schoolteacher, in the same passage, refers to Sethe in such a way that he believes she is no better than an animal. His speech refers to her as livestock, property to be owned and treated no better than the other animals i his possession, who just happens to help take care of his family. He reprimands his nephews for treating her so terribly-- after all, if you abuse an animal it won't be loyal to you. This situation reduces Sethe to that. She falls into the role Schoolteacher has set for her, rather than breaking free from it. And, in that way, she also fails to become completely free, despite no longer living as a slave.

Beloved is a manifestation of Sethe's guilt. Her existence, or perceived existence, is purely a way for Sethe to express her guilt, and, in the end, move toward life rather than dwelling on the past. Beloved's presence provokes many memories in Sethe, some of which she'd chosen to forget, and forces her to confront the past, rather than ignoring it. When Sethe begins to become overly attached to Beloved, it is her way of succumbing to the guilt which has finally overwhelmed her, brought on by the abandonment of her two sons who left in fear that Sethe may once again attempt to kill them. Beloved becomes a parasite to Sethe's psyche, letting Sethe finally mourn and lament her past actions. And, in the end, Beloved becomes the gateway for Sethe to abandon the past in favor of the here and now and protecting what she has, Denver.

Although Beloved is portrayed as a physical character that can interact with others aside from Sethe, her presence is focused on allowing Sethe's mind to heal itself, and allowing Sethe to move on with her life.

The Fall of the House of Usher

 Roderick in “The Fall of the House of Usher” allowed himself to fall victim to his own mind, allowing it to haunt him. His continually deteriorating condition was not mirrored by the physical appearance of the house; rather, he himself mirrored the house. That is, the house did not mirror Roderick but instead Roderick mirrored the house.
The house is described as being a 'mansion of gloom' and dilapidated. The building itself is described as beginning to crumble. It is overgrown with weeds and decaying, with a fissure running down the center of it.
Similarly, Roderick is described as looking broken and sickly. He is very pale, almost 'cadaverous' looking, and even his hair is untamed. 

It was put into Roderick's mind early on that he was under a curse. Regardless to whether there was a curse or not, Roderick allowed this concept to follow him throughout his daily life – to haunt him. Roderick allowed the idea of his ultimate fate to eventually consume him, and instead of succumbing to his fate, in the end he succumbed to his own mind.

In losing sight of reality and allowing his judgment to be clouded by the idea of a curse, Roderick slowly allowed himself to lose to the depth's of his own mind. While he knew his sister had a medical condition, he had, by the time of the narrator's arrival, convinced himself that his end was drawing near. Because of this, he chose to bury his sister alive, without regard to whether she was actually dead. However, a part of Roderick knew that he may have been mistaken, and that part only fueled his decline further.

His mind became more and more muddled with the idea that his sister may be alive and the noises he was hearing that proved she was. Roderick did not; however, allow the thought that his sister may still be alive to overwhelm him, and, in the end, did not go to check as to whether this was the case or not. The sounds and thoughts about his sister haunted Roderick, but only because he allowed them to do so.
In this way, it is Roderick who is allowing himself to mirror the house, rather than the house mirroring him. He allows outside influences to eat away at his mental state and, eventually, succumbs to it. His lack of strength as a character allows him to fall victim not to the house, but to his own deluded ideas about the house and the curse surrounding it and his family. Roderick is a character who is manipulated and changed by the ideas of what is around him, rather than having his own strength of mind to overcome the obsticles thrown in his way.

Finally, Roderick fell to his own haunting. It was not the house that haunted him, although it's condition may have provoked him into thinking it was, but instead it was Roderick's own mind and perceptions that haunted himself. It was not the house that caused Roderick to prematurely bury his sister, it was Roderick who did so. Roderick, who's mind was caught on the idea that he was doomed from the beginning, brought about his own fate. And, in the final scenes of the story, Roderick falls victim to his mind in one final instance. His sister, who was not dead, finally escaped her tomb and gave Roderick what his mind had been trying desperately to create until that point – A ghost. Although she was not actually dead, Roderick's fright upon thinking she was a ghost brought about his own demise, followed shortly thereafter by his starved and suffering sister.  

A Welcome.

In this blog I hope to analyze characters beyond their basic appearance. While I do believe in the existence of ghosts, most literature relating to the subject contains characters with inherent personality flaws and psychological problems that may well factor into their perception of being haunted. I intend to analyze these characters and present explanations beyond the basic idea that these stories are about hauntings. The presence of a ghost, especially in the works that I will examine, has deeper meaning. Their presence is tied to something else, and, in the case of the works I will look at, is a direct correlation to the characters in question.

Beyond this, many characters have traits that leave them as unreliable narrators. I would like to look at how their own bouts with life may have left them with scars, and how those scars may lead them to believe that their problems go beyond themselves. I'll look at what may be affecting them psychologically, and analyze how their own minds may be causing them to be haunted, that is, by themselves. I will then analyze whether the perceived haunting goes beyond the characters in question, or lies expressly with them.