Ghost Story

“The mind was a trap—it was a cage that slammed down over you.”

Don’s uncertainty about what is real and what is imagined plays into the story’s mood and the theme of Terror: Maintaining A Community During A Panic. The word choice of trap, cage, and slammed underscore the narrative’s pace and mood.

“Shadows of parking meters stood out, purely black, on the sidewalk: for a moment he was certain there were more shadows than parking meters. All the shadows hovering over the street were intensely black.”

Again, the uncanny and supernatural dread are experienced by the protagonist. This sense of self-doubt supports the fear and suspicious mood of the novel.

“‘What are you?’ She smiles. For the first time since he had taken her into the car, she really smiled. It was a transformation, but not of a kind to make him feel easier: she did not look any less adult. ‘You know,’ she said.”

In this interaction, Don exposes the threat posed by the little girl. Initially, Don seems to be the antagonist, but in this small interaction the girl portrayed as sinister through her comparison to an adult.

“[…] [B]lack skeletal arms and fingers, the bones of trees, hung against the leaves like signposts to winter.”

This quote demonstrates Straub’s use of imagery to build the symbolic use of both weather and the woods. Ricky cannot help but notice the unseasonable cold and the threat held in the bare branches. The use of the words skeletal and bones underscore the mood of fear.

“[…] [A] tarpaper shack with one greasepaper window and a stingy little pipe of a chimney […] looking at it, you knew it stank—somehow for me it appeared to breathe foulness […] I didn’t believe in evil, but evil was what I felt.”

Sears describes the Bate house. The imagery and diction allow the reader to imagine the place described and its malevolent nature. This description feeds the thematic outsider role the Bate brothers fill.

“…[A]n imposing man dressed in black, and for a moment he saw on the face of his old friend the waxy features his dream had given him. Behind him, around him, all of the town floated in wintry air, as if it too had secretly died.”

Lewis’s description typifies foreshadowing. He sees the town under threat and the weather’s role in the siege.

“Maybe this young Wanderley could set things right again: judging by his book, he has been to a few dark places himself. Maybe John was right, and Edward’s nephew would at least be able to figure out what was happening to the four of them. It could not just be guilt, after all this time.”

Even in his denial, Lewis shows the impact of Eva’s death on him. None of the members of the Chowder Society escape the secret and its repercussions.

“Just now I had a wonderful idea. It was about having her here in the house. I was standing here, listening to the kids’ disco music from downstairs, and hearing bits and pieces of the George Shearing record from in there, and I thought—downstairs is the raw, animal life, kids jumping around to the beat, on this floor we’ve got the mental life, doctors and lawyers, all middle-class respectability, and upstairs is grace, talent, beauty—the spirit. You see? It’s like evolution. She’s the most ethereal thing you’ve ever seen. And she’s only eighteen.”

John’s description of Ann-Veronica Moore demonstrates the power the female form and the shapeshifter have on the men with whom she interacts. This description supports the book’s theme of the Outsider.

“…[R]igid muscles, mouth drawn open as if to yell, empty eyes. It was the face of a man being tortured, flayed alive.”

This quote shows the imagery used throughout the novel that force both the reader and the characters to face the threat of their own death. The diction forces the reader to see the image of Edward dead on the floor with Ricky and John.

“[…] [O]ne of those places that seems to create its own limbo and then to nest down in it. Neither proper city or proper country—too small for one, too cramped for the other.”

Don’s descriptions of Milburn allow the reader to imagine the small town. These descriptions also build the foundation for Straub’s thematic development of maintaining a community through fear.

“‘If it starts this early and gets much worse, we could find ourselves snowed in before the end of winter’ […] The gray sky which had hung over the town for weeks had darkened nearly to black, broken by clouds like combers.”

The description of the weather Milburn endures draws on imagery to enhance the narrative mood. The weather symbolizes the control that the antagonists have taken over the town.

“It was the clarity which gave it mystery. Each bare and spiky branch, each tangle of wiry stalks, stood out separately, shining with its own life. Some wry magic hovered just out of sight. As Lewis went deeper into the woods, where the new snow had not penetrated, he saw his morning’s footprints, and they too seemed haunting and illustrative and part of the fairytale, these prints in snow coming toward him.”

Lewis haunts himself with his guilt. The evocative language and footprints in the snow show how Lewis’s choices return to haunt him, underscoring the theme of pride and shame in secrecy.

“I just turned it into a ghost story. I don’t know what really happened.”

Don’s confession of ignorance and lack of ending demonstrates the character’s powerlessness in the face of the shapeshifter. Don’s obsession with the ending foreshadows his need to chase the monster until the end.

“[…] [S]he suggested a world in which advisory ghosts and men who were disguised wolves could exist […] I do not mean that she made me believe in the paraphernalia of the supernatural; but that she suggested that such things might be fluttering invisibly about us. You step on a solid-looking piece of ground and it falls away under your shoe.”

Alma shows Don a world without natural laws and limitations. Don is fascinated at first, but the repulsed by this supernatural world. The mystery drives him, but he pulls away. This action demonstrates his character and the reason the shapeshifter chooses to torment him.

“[…] Milburn held sway, Milburn was in Walt Hardesty’s suspicion and nervousness, his rude ‘What the hell are you doing here?’”

Don’s interactions at the hospital show him that he cannot flee the conflict; it will follow him. The sheriff’s gruff language reminds him of his powerlessness and lack of authority.

“[…] [W]here people were beginning to close themselves up as the snows grew worse and the houses seemed to melt closer together; where his uncle had died and his uncle’s friends dreamed of horrors; away from the century and back to the confinement of Milburn, more and more like that of his own mind.”

The weather continues to symbolize the grip the monster has over Milburn. Each citizen tuns away from community due to their fear, highlighting Straub’s themes.

“Linda didn’t live through the night. Otto, I think the same thing that got my wife is after me.”

Lewis’s word choice underscores his sense of powerlessness. He uses passive language for himself and an active verb for the monster. Lewis finally tells his ghost story, but he does not find release in it.

“I think it is a very American sort of story […] because, my good friend, everyone in your story is haunted. Even the credit card was haunted. Most of all the teller.”

Otto’s statement reminds the reader of the novel’s literary roots in the American Gothic tradition. The ghost story has permeated American culture for longer than the country has existed. The most American thing is the haunted credit card.

“[T]his being had nothing in it that was human, and that it only dressed in the body it had once owned […] that this pure destructiveness was not its own […] another mind owned and directed it as surely as the creature owned the dreadful purity of its evil.”

The description of Gregory Bate shows his malevolence and his submission to the shapeshifter. Peter realizes that this wolfman can be killed, but it was not its own keeper. The dehumanization shows the creatures lack of individual will.

“Stitched into the pattern of needles and branches was the outline of a door. A clump of dark needles formed the handle. It was the most perfect optical illusion […].”

The imagery here creates a bridge between the monster and the woods, marrying the symbol to the antagonist. Lewis’s step through the door in the woods is his submission to the shapeshifter.

“This December Milburn looks less like a village on a Christmas card than a village under siege.”

This quote highlights the theme of Terror: Maintaining A Community During A Panic. The neighbors hole up, but do not turn on each other. They are at war, though they are not soldiers.

“[F]or the first time in most of their lives, Milburn people saw the weather as malevolent, a hostile force that would kill them if they let it.”

The shapeshifter’s power grows, and so does the weather’s. The symbolic link between the two continues as both become hostile and malevolent.

“Could you defeat a cloud, a dream, a poem? You are at the mercy of your human imaginations and when you look for us, you should always look in the places of your imagination. In the places of your dreams. But despite all this talk about imagination, we are implacably real, as real as bullets and knives—for aren’t they too tools of the imagination?—and if we want to frighten you it is to frighten you to death.”

The shapeshifter attempts to convince the Chowder Society to give in to her power. She leaves breadcrumbs for them to follow, but where they lead is a trap. Ricky, Don, and Peter follow, and it nearly kills them.