47 pages • 1 hour read
Amos TutuolaMy Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 23-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: “I Meet My Dead Cousins in the 10th Town of Ghosts”
When the narrator arrives at the 10th town of ghosts, he sees his cousin who died when the narrator was young. The narrator, his cousin, and the other ghosts in town spend all night celebrating his arrival. After the narrator sleeps in a bed for the first time since he left the Super-Lady’s house, his cousin tells him that he traveled to different ghost towns after his death but didn’t like any until he arrived at the 10th town. His cousin decides that with his background in the Methodist church, he wants to build a Methodist community in his town. He receives permission from H.M. the King of the Bush of Ghosts to build his church, and he also builds a school, hospital, and houses that resemble modern homes. The narrator has many questions for his cousin, including where he gained the authority to call himself the bishop of the town. The narrator tells his cousin how he came to be in the bush of ghosts, and his cousin says that he will continue to teach him the language of the ghosts until the narrator qualifies as “a full dead person” (145). The narrator spends the next six months learning how to read and write as well as how to behave as a ghost. He helps his cousin build a police force in the town, and the narrator is chosen to be the chief judge.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Invisible Magnetic Missive Sent to Me From Home”
Now that the narrator feels established as a ghost, he does not desire to go back to his hometown until he dreams of seeing his mother and brother along with his old friends from back home. He continues to have these dreams and cannot ignore them. He is unaware that his family went to a fortune teller to ask if the narrator is still alive. The fortune teller tells them that the narrator lives in the bush of ghosts and is being taken care of by someone he cannot reveal; he also tells the narrator’s family that the narrator no longer desires to come back home. His family pays the fortune teller to use his “magnetic juju” to bring the narrator back home, and the fortune teller sends the narrator this juju every night to change his mind about coming home.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Bad-Bye Function”
The narrator convinces his cousin to let him leave their town to visit one of his friends in the bush of ghosts. Secretly, the narrator plans to leave the bush of ghosts entirely and go back home. However, the fortune teller’s juju cannot show him the way home, and he spends another nine months trying to find his way back. He arrives at the 18th town of ghosts, which is 600 miles away from the 10th town. During his stay with a local ghost in this town, the narrator reveals that he learned magic from one of the ghosts in his cousin’s town. He competes with another magician in the 18th town in front of their chief, and he turns the other magician into a dog. The town gives the narrator many gifts, and he turns the ghost back into his natural form. He attempts to leave this town with his gifts, but the other magician gets angry when the narrator does not share the gifts with him. They continue to fight, and the narrator kills an animal to use its head. He places the head on the ground, and the magician tries to talk to the head. The magician goes back to the 18th town to tell the other ghosts, including their king, that he saw a place where the ground has eyes and a head. The king accuses of him lying and kills him for the offense. The narrator leaves and goes back to searching for his home.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Television-Handed Ghostess”
While sitting in a hut, the narrator sees a ghostess covered in scars coming towards him. She sits in the hut with him and cries next to the fire. She reveals that she is crying because he is the reason for her sores. She has visited many sorcerers who have told her that an earthly person has been wandering the bush of ghosts and that he will need to lick her sores every day for 10 years for them to heal. She also tells him that the path to his home has always been right in front of him, but he has not realized it. The narrator tells the ghostess that he will not lick her sores, and she tells him to look at her palm. On her palm, she shows him a screen of his mother and brother back in their home. She then asks him if he now will lick her sores.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Hard to Say ‘No’ and Hard to Say ‘Yes’”
The narrator contemplates how he will answer the “television-handed ghostess” because he wants to say “no” and “yes.” He wants to say no because of the sores and maggots that are on her body, but he wants to say yes because he wants to see his family again. He asks to see his family again on the ghostess’s hand, and he hears his mother talk about him to their neighbor. He also sees his mother heal a sore on a baby’s foot with a local plant, and he decides to do the same for the ghostess. He reveals that he will heal her sores if she tells him how to get home. She takes his offer on the condition that he does not reveal that she is the one who told him how to get home. He also promises not to return to the bush of ghosts. She shows him her palm again, and he finds himself back at the fruit tree where his brother left him after running away from the men with guns.
Chapter 28 Summary: “The Future-Sign Tree”
Back at the fruit tree, the narrator sits for half an hour “because everything [has] been changed” since he left his hometown (161). As he stands there, two slave traders capture him, and he is taken to their town, which is not the same as his own. During his enslavement, he develops sores on his body that will not heal, and the man who has enslaved him attempts to sell him for a cheap price. However, no one wants the narrator as an enslaved person because of his sores. Eventually, a rich man, who is unknowingly the narrator’s brother, buys him with the intention of sacrificing him to his god. When the narrator and the rich man arrive at their town, the narrator realizes he is home, but he also understands that his family will not recognize him since he has been gone for 24 years. The narrator soon realizes that the rich man is his brother, and he begins to sing a song from their childhood. He also says his brother’s name several times. Just as his brother is about to sacrifice him, he asks the narrator to sing the song again, so he does. When his brother realizes that the narrator is his long-lost brother, he has his orderlies clean him up, and his brother’s wives offer him food.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Gladness Becomes Weeping”
The narrator and his mother are reunited, and they each share their stories. The narrator’s mother was enslaved and, when the man who enslaved her realized she worked as hard as a man, he released her after eight years of enslavement. The narrator tells his brother and mother about his time in the bush of ghosts. They tell him that he will not go back to the bush of ghosts again, and the narrator thinks about his desire to be at the “Secret Society of Ghosts,” which is celebrated once a century (170). He has dreams about performing at this event, and he reveals that his dreams always come true. The novel ends with the words, “This is what hatred did” (170).
Chapters 23-29 Analysis
The last several chapters of the novel illustrate the narrator’s ability to adapt to his surroundings while also determining how he wants to exist in his environment. For example, he takes on the role of chief judge in the 10th town of ghosts, where he also “[learns] how to read and write” (145), which expands on the theme of Colonialism and Its Consequences. During this time, he establishes his identity through a formal education that mirrors one of an earthly, or human, schooling while also learning how to be “a full dead man” (146). This education implies that the narrator aligns with both human and non-human identities, which is indicative of his coming of age in both his earthly hometown and the bush of ghosts. As he grows older, the narrator becomes more inquisitive, questioning the social and political structures he encounters. He questions his cousin about “who ordained [him] before [he] came up with the rank of a bishop” as well as who supplies the resources for the school and hospital (143). In the chapters before this, the narrator willingly accepts existing structures, such as becoming a hunter for the flash-eyed mother, but as he grows older, he begins to better understand such structures and question why they exist. However, the narrator also reveals that his curiosity about social and political structures is limited. When his cousin answers his questions, the narrator simply moves along with his story without questioning or reflecting on his cousin’s answers.
During this section, the narrator’s desire to go home deepens, and he resumes his journey to reunite with his family, which further pushes his identity back to that of a human and away from the ghosts. The dreams of his family do not allow him “to eat, play, or feel happy at all” (147), indicating that his emotional well-being is negatively affected by the distance from his family. His family’s decision to consult a local fortune teller and utilize the “magnetic juju” further creates The Connection Between the Physical and the Spiritual. Though the Super-Lady previously revealed that earthly witches and wizards exist, the fortune teller’s magic is the narrative’s first example of this earthly magic in use. The fortune teller’s juju creates a symbiotic relationship between the worlds, illustrating the coexistence of humans and nonhumans.
When the narrator arrives back at the fruit tree, the circularity of the narrative is revealed as the events leading up to his entrance to the bush repeat themselves, illustrating both Colonialism and Its Consequences and the narrator’s ongoing journey of self-discovery. The narrator originally enters the bush due to the threat of slave traders and, when he exits the bush, he is immediately kidnapped by slave traders as though time has stopped in the earthly town. However, the passage of time is clear when the narrator indicates that “the slave trade was then still existing” when he exited the bush (161). The narrator’s words imply that the long-standing consequences of colonialization and the slave trade will continue to impact the daily lives of the local communities, furthering the theme of colonialism and its consequences. At the end of the novel, the narrator’s tone when referring to his desire to experience the “Secret Society of Ghosts” implies his identity does not truly exist as either human or ghost (170). Rather, his comment that his family asserts “on their own accord” that he will not be re-entering the bush of ghosts suggests that he does in fact want to go back to the bush (170). The narrator’s claim that he dreams about attending the secret society and that his “[dreams] always come to the truth” indicates that although the narrative ends here, the narrator’s journey is not yet over (170).
