Lesson 6: Ghosts
The Ghost and the Guilt Complex
Ghosts as the other are often not only representations of our fears and our future selves, but also of our guilty selves or those parts of us that we are less proud of. Or the other. It has been seen earlier that the other is a projection upon some outside entity of the qualities that we do not like in ourselves. This is what happens in Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart".
The story is told from the first-person point of view. The narrator very early on asserts that he is "not mad", telling the reader that this is exactly what he is. Like many of the narrators in Lovecraft's fiction, this one is unreliable. The first thing that begins to bother him unreasonably is his boarder's eye. An extreme paranoia and abjection eventually drives him to kill the boarder and bury him under the floor boards. When the police arrive to investigate a noise, the narrator invites them to the very room where he has buried the unfortunate victim. This is where the narrator's guilt begins to project itself. The murder vicitm's heart begins to beat under the floor boards. The narrator imagines that the policemen are looking at him in a knowing manner. This projected guilt later becomes too much for the narrator and he shouts out his confession.
Here the restless murder victim was purely a projection from the fevered imagination of the murderer. His own guilt was projected onto the heart, until the urge to confess became so strong that he had to confess. The murderer is reconciled with his other; his guilt.
Thus all malicious spirits that human beings fight against in an attempt to overcome them represents either a negation of death, and attempt to reconcile with death, or a negation of some negative quality in the self. See for example the chapter on repression (Chapter IV) in Clemens. The human relationship with the ghostly other is a complex and uncomfortable one. Reconciliation means an acknowledgement of death or of a negative trait. Neither acknowledgement is particularly attractive to the human psyche. Yet when acknowledgement and unity with our ghosts are achieved, a healthier psyche is the result. This is helped by horror literature.
Something to Think About
What is the scariest ghost story you have ever read or heard? Why did this particular story scare you? Have you had any personal experiences with ghosts? If so, are there any particular traits or fears that you projected onto your apparition?
