Ophie's Ghosts

“But Ophie’s gaze was quickly drawn away from them and to the house. The house that Daddy bragged about building with his own two hands after he married Mama. The house where they spent Christmas and Sunday dinners and where Ophie slept and argued and cried and did all the messy business of growing up. Her house.”

The destruction of Ophie’s house is an inciting incident that destroys her family’s stability. She is overcome with emotion when she discovers the burned house, and the passage’s mournful tone conveys the grief that Ophie feels over the life she is losing. This act of violence effectively robs her of her childhood security and thrusts her over the threshold into adulthood as she and her mother have to leave Darling, Georgia, and relocate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“They met the girl’s eyes as she stared out the window at them, they felt her gaze like sunshine on a spring day, warm and comforting, and for a moment they were seen. They existed once again. It was a heady feeling, and every specter wanted more.”

In the first interlude chapter, the third-person narrator inhabits the Pennsylvania Railroad’s consciousness and reveals the innumerable ghosts that live on the train. This formal shift introduces the ghosts’ connection to the novel’s focus on The Importance of Addressing Past Injustices. Although none have yet come forth with messages or grievances, the ghosts awaken to Ophie’s presence, hopeful that she will give attention and credence to their lost stories.

“Ophie could understand why someone would want to do that, even though she couldn’t imagine abandoning her people. The more Ophie thought about it, the harder it seemed to be colored, to have to think before doing anything, to wonder if the white folks looking at her meant her harm. No one came and burned someone’s house down in the middle of the night if that person was white.”

This passage of internal monologue conveys Ophie’s attempt to understand the complexities of social injustice. Via her own firsthand experiences, she is learning about the politics that govern the Jim Crow era. Ophie has no innate shame of being Black, but the world is teaching her that the way she looks is problematic to others.