6. Talk about the two old codgers, Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins III. Would you consider them the "heroes" of the novel? Why are they so eager to have Will leave the cemetery? Where do they want him to go? What will happen should he "tarry"?
I loved these guys. Their personalities were so endearing and their characters showed a lot of growth, as well. They were like the odd couple. I loved how they reinforced each other’s denial and tolerated the other’s idiosyncrasies. “Friend…” got me every time. I am not sure if I would consider Hans Vollman and Bevins the heroes, though? While they underwent a good amount of growth through tribulations, the Reverend Everly Thomas was also a lead character that played a very vital part and could be considered the hero, himself. These guys know that Willie Lincoln will become a weird shape-shifting sub-creature just as the Treynor girl did if he does not move on out of the bardo and into the real afterlife. For some reason, children aren’t meant for this place. They usually transition quickly and do not tarry. Maybe because they don’t have such a strong sense of self to stay in the thought patterns that lock them into the denial that perpetuates their tarrying? They grow, what Saunders calls, carapaces. I think that’s an interesting way to look at a child that lingers in the depressive stagnant mental bardo of life, growing a shell of sorts over them, nothing but their eyes peering through…”blinking twice.” They want him to go into the “matterlightblooming phenomenon” place, to be judged or whatever truly happens there (but no one really knows what happens there except possibly the Reverend Everly Thomas). If he tarries, he will be trapped in the bardo in a self-limiting form. For children, the bardo is a form of Hell. They are cemented by carapaces to the cemetery.
7. Why is the Reverend, unlike all the other spirits, willing to admit he is dead? And why is he convinced he will be excluded from heaven?
The Reverend went into the “matterlightblooming phenomenon” after his death. He climbed the mountain and descended into the valley of the king with two men he understood to have died just before him, and watched as both, before him, were judged. His soul was then to be judged and he saw that he was going to be sent to Hell and so he ran. (…he ran so far away…couldn’t get away…) He is an escapee, afraid of eternity in Hell. He believes he has seen where he will go so he is secretly prolonging his existence, and so he tarries. The Reverend says he actually passed “simultaneously becoming cause and (awed) observer (from within) of the bone-chilling firesound associated with the matterlightblooming phenomenon (an experience I shall not even attempt to describe), I went.” I love how they describe this thing. It’s a blundering way to describe something indescribable that almost describes it perfectly. Some great BIG BANG of sorts, they are describing. What happened to the Reverend is a little confusing, though. Whereas everyone else seemed to hear the firesound and the whole matterlightblooming phenomenon happened and they were gone and that was that. The Reverend describes simultaneously falling out of that place and being still in the graveyard, and at one point being back in the graveyard and wanting nothing more than to be back on the mountain with his friends and found the bardo entirely unappealing. He had the thought that the bardo was “…a sad remnant of a discouraging and grossly material nightmare from which I was only just waking” and with that thought, he was instantaneously back on the mountain with his traveling friends, nearing their destination. This was after he indicated to the other two men that they should continue on into the valley they saw below, after they paused and almost asked if they should proceed, seeing he was a man of God, having been buried in his vestments. The description of the Reverend in the Bardo, mouth agape in the shape of an O, hair on end, he was a caricature of fear. He seems unable to determine his life’s sin, but I feel his test in the bardo was to truly learn faith and that his lack of faith was, in fact, his life’s sin. Although a man of religion, he was never fully faithful in what he was preaching, and that is what came through when his heart was weighed. In a way, in the bardo he was an escapee running from eternity in Hell, but maybe in Life, in being a Reverend, he was really just running away from eternity in Hell and did not really have true faith in what he was preaching or doing. It seems to be what you place on your own heart to learn, your own hang ups that keep you from moving on.
THE REVEREND: I feel like the Reverend is, perhaps, more so the hero of the book. He is the one the entire time that has had this secret, the secret of the only other “scene” or place of the book, the afterlife. He is the only one that actually knows that they all await judgment if they shed the self imposed shackles of the bardo and he has been charged with keeping this secret. He doubly fears hell, because he was already sentenced to hell and fled, but now if he speaks of his experience, he surely would be judged even harsher upon his return? One would think. I think there was growth in his beliefs during this and he essentially saved the boy by transitioning, in the end, and going into the matterlightblooming phenomenon and creating a “temporary vacuity” that they used to break Willie free of the carapace. So he displayed an immense deal of courage in the face of burning in Hell for all eternity and essentially sacrificed himself for the soul of the boy, but also himself, because if he were not to transition he would be trapped in the carapace forever. In the end, though, I think The Reverend transitioned well, no longer in the state of fear, because they said about seeing his facial imprint in the carapace after breaking Willie free and were happy to say it wasn’t the face of terror that they had known.
The entire time, also, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Reverend’s experience going into the matterlightblooming phenomenon wasn’t just a personalized experience because of his fear of judgment at the time of his death? So, it’s really still so intriguing how the bardo works. In the end, there really is no judgment awaiting them. The only judgment is self-judgment, and they await whatever they project or manifest. Just like the real afterlife, I’m still a little confused as to what happens and I guess we all are. We won’t know what awaits us until our time comes to hear the “familiar, yet always bone-chilling fire-sound associated with the matterlightblooming phenomenon”
Missie Sue8. In what way does the cemetery reflect the class structure of the 19th Century? What do you make of the Rev. Thomas' explanation: "It is not about wealth. It is about comportment. It is about, let us say, being "wealthy in spirit"?
The cemetery is set up to hold the higher class or those with money. The spirits or “shards” that inhabit the cemetery, including the poor Barons, come from a common cemetery pit located outside of the fence I believe. They mingle, but don’t have sick boxes like the rest of them. The Barons are piled on top of the slave Ellis. They also, are some of the more crude characters in the book. The one slave, however, that was also buried in this hole, his butt was in their faces. He was happy with his servitude, but had a bit of resentment for having never been free, or rather, having never fought for his freedom. He felt ashamed for almost trying to acquiesce and fit in with his owners during his servitude. Never having been able to choose where to go whenever he wanted. This character, especially, made you think a lot about what it really meant to be a slave even if one was treated reasonably well. But in the cemetery the “black folks” didn’t go into the church with the others because “white people are not especially fond of having us in their churches. Unless it is to hold a baby, or prop up or hand-fan some old one.”
The country was in its own bardo, a liminal state, in between allowing slavery and declaring all men created equal. A great sloughing or shedding is symbolic of this stage, a leaving behind of that which will no longer serve us. For the dead, it is their bodies. These empty vessels, bereft of life, will no longer serve their spirits. They must move on and let go in order to continue on their journey. The country must move on. In life, we must move on from one stage of our lives into another, but there is almost always a liminal bardo state, a mourning, for any stage of life. Grief, is, almost always, the outer rim of a stage of life. There is a nostalgic sadness to the acceptance needed in order to let go.
It was beautiful the way Saunders ended it by having the slave Thomas Havens have the final words, having decided to stay in the bardo and stay inside of Lincoln. It’s a beautiful thing to think of the President who ended slavery fighting the good fight with the spirit of an old slave inside of him, their spirits mingling, Lincoln perhaps feeling or responding to Thomas Havens’ inner war cry: “…do something for us, so that we might do something for ourselves. We are ready, sir; are angry, are capable, our hopes are coiled up so tight as to be deadly, or holy: turn us loose, sir, let us at it, let us show what we a can do.”
This book was so god damned beautiful, man?! I want to see it made into a movie!
I think Saunders did a good job attempting to tap into the inner realm of Abraham Lincoln at this time. The thoughts when the ghosts are inside him seem so intense, with direction. Determined. The passage of thought when he goes through Mrs. Francis Hodge at the end is pretty great. About, God being not a man, but an “IT” that he called a “great beast beyond our understanding” and that it wanted blood. Serious stuff. The stress Lincoln experienced was a bit different than the “stress” that our poor “stable genius” is dealing with currently. That. Is. For. Sure.
9. Although the preponderant mood of the novel is dark, there is also a fair amount of hilarity. Can you point to some passages/episodes that you found particularly funny? The bachelor ghosts, for instance?
A lot of the crude scenes were hilarious because they were so crude.
The ghosts are all trapped in their own perspectives, presenting themselves in the way they found themselves at the time of their death. If they are able to let go of this, they transition with “the matterlightblooming phenomenon and its familiar, but always bone-chilling, firesound”.
Some of the other parts, which were brilliantly woven together from other writings, were also funny, although, they weren’t perhaps meant to be? It was just funny, to me, how rude some of the accounts of Lincoln’s appearance and competence were, some of those comments were so outrageous I can’t believe people were documenting those things or that Saunders dug them out of the pages of history, but I feel the author did a brilliant job of pulling together writings that simultaneously proclaimed his ignorance, and celebrated his brilliance. Some of them are fictional, I believe, but a bit of it is from real accounts. It was a well-balanced account of the President. Those odd motley passages I think I found the saddest, because they were painting the historical backdrop and so much about Willie Lincoln I wasn’t aware of, mostly his death’s proximity to the height of the war. The party they held that night, and the accounts of it. Thinking about having to make the choices Abraham Lincoln had to make during his presidency, crazy. It was a tragic metaphor for Lincoln and it was interesting to see how Saunders believed the inner world of Lincoln would be during this trying time of his life. It’s made creepier by the fact that he actually did go to the graveyard to cradle his dead son’s body and that is what inspired this book to be written, and those are some of the most heartbreaking parts of the book.
![[ the first rule of ] BOOK CLUB](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLGOw71PHpkZTmu08-Jh8bLwydChAvKj70t7elCBvxuL3eJ1zQ0qTv5HDyDzO-KSnWITQ8kGImf-wb-Zfk8VmuFznxnYIWc_xGSyCU9ZApdQOmKIpo6Ak8rWCYqEcEhUAOghl4PNuxkPm6pDtl6_jIDCwqrcMUD3_OBvQrpINzFwcmRZrIPxAUftqx2w=s960)
