- 23/02/2013
- Posted by: essay
- Category: Free essays
Epilogue
James Thurber, being one of the greatest comic writers of the 20th century, presents a bright example of his talent is a short humoristic story under the title “The Night the Ghost Got In”. It is not very long, however, the events develop very quickly and intensively. The main character, who presents Thurber himself in his young years, narrates the whole story, so it is a first person central narration. Readers discover events from Thumber’s position, he presents all the action through his imagination. All the events take place in the house and due to this fact decorations play an important role in the plot creation. They add colorful details making the story even more humorous and twisted
Interpretation of “The Night the Ghost Got In”
The story was published in 1933 and as Robert Emmet wrote in his book devoted to James Thurber, it is “one of the most striking and original books published in America in the 1930s”.
It is interesting to note that the author in his story “The Night the Ghost Got In” presents his own image in the main character. Thurber is a young man who hears some strange noise downstairs. He assumes that it is a ghost. It is the starting point of the story. He comes to his relatives’ rooms discussing this event and, all in all, they decide to call the police. It is an especially humorous episode of the story: the mother throws her shoe out of the window to the neighbors. Inside the shoe there is note and the neighbors call the police.
The story touches upon one of the most undiscovered and resting themes in the history of the mankind – existence of the supernatural. Thurber makes his readers believe that the noise downstairs that he has heard is produced by the ghost. The author provides some evidence: firstly, there are no fingerprints on door handles, chairs or tables, secondly, nothing has been taken, so the assumption with burglars is inappropriate, thirdly, Thumber’s father and brothers could not come at that time. One possible explanation is the appearance of the ghost. Readers get no information about the purpose of the visit, any reasons or origin of the ghost. Nevertheless, its existence becomes evident from Thumber’s words. This is the leading theme of the story.
At the same time, another interesting feature is author’s style of narration. The usual genres for supernatural narration are either horror or folktale. Thurber’s story does not pass to any of these categories. The author possessing a unique talent is able to combine this mysterious and unexplained topic with humorous sketches and everyday family relations. Moreover, this story presents a fictionalized sketch from Thurber’s real life, his family and his household, while he was a young person. In the introduction to the story the author gives an exact date from his life when these events took place: it was on the 17th of November, 1915.
To sum up, the short story “The Night the Ghost Got In” written by Jame Thurber in 1933 is a unique combination of humorous exaggeration, mysterious topic and perfect narration. The author wants his readers to amuse themselves, to relax and at the same time he draws pictures of people’s world interpretation. It is a humorous story that is easy to read and perceive and interesting to reveal some facts and author’s images.
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