46 pages • 1 hour read
James ThurberThe Night the Ghost Got In
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1933A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Unknown and Meaninglessness
At its root, “The Night the Ghost Got In” is centered around the unknown and how the characters respond when dealing with something they are incapable of explaining. Because the characters never see the source of the noise, their minds fill in the blanks, rendering them unable to determine what is really going on. For the members of the Thurber family, this causes the characters to feed off each other’s anxieties and escalate the situation. The fictionalized young Thurber is the first to discover the sound, listening at the stairs but not fully investigating before deciding to awaken his easily frightened brother Herman, which only causes more anxiety for Thurber’s brother. When their mother is woken up by the noise, neither Thurber nor his brother answer her when she asks what’s going on, causing her to assume that the source of the noise must be burglars. Thurber notes that he “hadn’t dared to tell her that it was burglars and not ghosts,” (35) knowing that her already heightened reaction would only get worse.
In direct contrast with the Thurbers’ tendency to escalate situations and jump to conclusions in the face of the unknown, the police represent a foil to the family through their judgmental and invasive efforts to uncover evidence and a rational explanation. The officers are immediately suspicious of the family, particularly the young James Thurber, upon arrival. Finding the Thurbers’ windows and doors all locked, they set their focus on the only known oddity they encounter: the Thurbers themselves, pinning the unknown on what they cannot understand. The officers are disappointed and reluctant to leave without discovering a culprit or making an arrest, but they are eventually forced (especially after the run-in with Grandfather in the attic) to give up on finding an answer. Thurber and his family, too, are left without much resolution, highlighting the sense of meaninglessness present in absurdist fiction.
War’s Effect on the Social Conscience
The genre of absurdism’s roots lie in wartime literature that describes the search—and subsequent failure of that search—for meaning. The message at absurdism’s core is that war is meaningless, and Thurber subtly conveys this message in the story.
The three members of the Thurber family that appear in this story each feel convicted at some point that their unseen foe is a burglar, but each of them soon discovers that this isn’t the case. Likewise, the policemen search in vain for a burglar or some mischief caused by the Thurber children, but they find no culprit. These quests for meaning that find no conclusion mirror the thwarted expectations of citizens during wartime: While they feel strongly about their country’s cause for starting a war, they find at the war’s end that they have not achieved anything at all.
We also see the traumatic effects of war on citizens in Thurber’s characters. The mother, Thurber, and his brother are excitable and prone to paranoia, and the neighbor has “attacks” of rage, as do other people in the community. Paranoia and explosive outbursts are symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is commonly associated with war veterans. The story indicates that the characters have a collective trauma caused by the wartime environment in which they live.
The most apparent presence of war within the story occurs with Grandfather’s relived experience with the Civil War. While the other characters are swept up in the fear of the war currently happening in their present, Grandfather is preoccupied with the war of his past, and his experience seems to heavily contrast with the war the younger generations are currently facing. Grandfather’s flashback is centered around the idea of honor in combat and punishing desertion, which is traditionally considered a display of cowardice in a military context. This points to a generational divide in which Grandfather, in his perceived inability to distinguish the past from the present, cannot understand why the younger generations are responding in fear to a war occurring on a much larger and more horrific scale.
Truth is Subjective
Thurber plays with the idea of what is true, in both the sense of the overall context of the full collection as well as within the context of the story. The characters are concerned with what really happened, but for the reader, it’s the characters’ reactions to what they think is happening that matters. Thurber displays this through the interactions the family has with the police, particularly Grandfather. In the context of a flashback or episode of confusion, Grandfather is only cognizant of what he thinks (or what he’s pretending to think) is happening—he is back in the Civil War, and other soldiers are deserting. It may not be true as far as the reality of what’s happening in the moment, but for all the other Thurbers and the police know, it’s what’s true for Grandfather. The characters seem to honor that truth, if in a humorous manner. While Grandfather reveals that he remembers the night’s events after all, implying that he pretends to be confused to get the officers out of the house, his subversion of the truth does not become the focus of the story. Instead, it becomes another aspect of the night’s main mystery.
Thurber also blurs the line between truth and fiction by acknowledging the strangeness of truth itself. During an interaction with two officers, Thurber mentions that what he says about the zither being a bed for their guinea pig is true. He immediately follows up by saying that he “should never have said so” (36), as this only increases the level of suspicion the officers have towards the family. Thurber later notes that he understands why the officers believe the situation is “phony” (38). In the context of the full collection, the Thurbers’ antics are par for the course, but for the outside observer—the officers, in this case, but just as equally the reader—the Thurbers are rightfully ridiculous. The suspension of disbelief works because Thurber doesn’t ask his reader to suspend it, electing to lean into the strangeness of the events to heighten the comedic nature of the narrative.
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