The Ghost Motif in How I Became A Ghost

Jacob LaHue

Category A Prompt B:

            Throughout Tim Tingle’s novel, How I Became a Ghost, it is no surprise that the novel’s protagonist, Isaac, has many encounters with ghostly apparitions. The appearance of ghosts in the novel that only Isaac is capable of seeing is a motif that Tingle employs. The appearance of ghosts serves many purposes. For example, it lessens the shock of characters in the novel dying – they aren’t really gone, they’ve just moved into a different state of being. Additionally, they provide moral support for Isaac, and transitively for the reader, as some of the more explicit and violent scenes in the novel unfold. The ghosts help Isaac and through him, the reader to make sense of what is occurring. The motif of ghosts appearing to Isaac complicates the reading in some of the later chapters, in particular chapters 26 and 27, by altering the way the reader perceives the novel’s antagonists, the soldiers which are driving the Choctaw people from their land.

            Generally throughout the novel, the soldiers are perceived by Isaac and readers as malicious villains. They burn Isaac’s village, give them blankets carrying smallpox, steal Choctaw children, and worse. However, somewhat ironically, it is during one of these displays of cruelty that Isaac is able to relate to the humanity of the soldiers. In chapter 26 when the soldiers are demanding to take Nita away, but are confronted only with her corpse, Isaac sees “children hovering close to their fathers. Boys and girls clung to their soldier fathers (Tingle 127)”. Isaac then realizes that soldiers are people too, just like his family, they have a family. This complicates the reading by adding an aspect of humanity to the previously inhuman and villainous portrayal of the soldiers.

            In the following chapter, the motif of the appearance of ghosts/spirits for only Isaac to witness further complicates the reading. Once again, while witnessing the cruelty of Leader, Isaac sees an aspect of the soldiers’ humanity. When they are cruel to the Bonepickers, the grandmothers, mothers, and aunts of the soldiers surround them. Isaac realizes that the soldiers have mothers and families too. This calls into question once again the previously established perception of the soldiers. Through this motif, Isaac is able to make the realization that the soldiers are people with families, children and mothers and grandmothers, just like his people.