The Night the Ghost Got In

“I suspected next that it was a burglar. It did not enter my mind until later that it was a ghost.”

The first paragraph of the story informs the reader exactly when the events of the narrative take place and summarize what transpires. Thurber keeps a casual and comically regretful tone that creates intrigue for the reader.

“Since the phone was downstairs, I didn’t see how we were going to call the police—nor did I want the police—but mother made one of her quick, incomparable decisions.”

Thurber’s mother displays an initial desire to apply rationality to the situation but realizing the option to do so is out of reach, she quickly turns to an impulsive decision. His mother’s actions escalate the already high emotions of their neighbor.

“Most everybody we knew or lived near had some kind of attacks.” 

Thurber includes this line after mentioning Mr. Bodwell’s “attacks,” which for him seem to manifest as fits of rage. Though a seemingly minor detail, this observation speaks to the heightened mental and emotional state that can be prevalent when a community is surrounded by war and the threat of the unknown.

“After he had disappeared from the window, mother suddenly made as if to throw another shoe, not because there was further need of it but, as she later explained, because the thrill of heaving a shoe through a window glass had enormously taken her fancy. I prevented her.” 

This passage highlights the nature of Mrs. Thurber’s excitability and tendency to escalate situations. There’s no reason to throw another shoe, as the neighbors have already been alerted and the police have been called. The thrill Mrs. Thurber gets from throwing the shoe, and her desire to do so a second time, points to the way her character feeds off the escalation she creates.

“‘There were two or three of them,’ mother said, ‘whooping and carrying on and slamming doors.’” 

Mrs. Thurber’s conversation with the police shows how her perspective of the night’s events differs from that of her son’s, along with her tendency to exaggerate that perspective. When she is woken by the noise downstairs, she asks her sons about the running. It isn’t until she speaks to the police that she attributes the door slamming, which the reader is aware is Thurber and Herman, to the alleged burglars as well.

“It was true that a pet guinea pig we once had would never sleep anywhere but the zither, but I shouldn’t have said so.” 

The story behind the zither shows how the Thurbers are at odds with the way the officers expect the truth to look. Thurber realizes that even though the story is true, it sounds too bizarre to be believable to the already suspicious police.

“I realized that it would be bad if they burst in on grandfather unannounced, or even announced. He was going through a phase in which he believed that General Meade’s men, under steady hammering by Stonewall Jackson, were beginning to retreat and even desert.”

Grandfather’s phase, though exploited by Grandfather himself in the narrative, is another example of the ways in which war is a large part of social consciousness in Thurber’s community. Thurber foreshadows the trouble the police are facing by awakening his grandfather.

“The cops were reluctant to leave without getting their hands on somebody besides grandfather; the night had been distinctly a defeat for [them].”

Thurber is poking fun at the way the police’s main goal is to apprehend a culprit or suspect, instead of being a source of public safety. The police, like Thurber’s mother, thrive on escalation and action.

“The reporter looked at me with mingled suspicion and interest. ‘Just what the hell is the real lowdown here, Bud?’ I decided to be frank with him. ‘We had ghosts,’ I said. He gazed at me a long time as if I were a slot machine into which he had, without results, dropped a nickel. Then he walked away.”

Along with the police, the reporter is another character who is invested in finding a rational answer to the night’s events. When Thurber provides his version of the truth, the reporter, like the police with the zither, assumes Thurber is pulling his leg.

“‘What was the matter with that one policeman?’ mother asked, after they had gone. ‘Grandfather shot him,’ I said. ‘What for?’ she demanded. I told her he was a deserter. ‘Of all things!’ said mother. ‘He was such a nice-looking young man.’”

Mrs. Thurber’s reaction to Grandfather shooting an officer offers both a comedic moment as well as insight into the family’s attitude towards Grandfather. Mother’s reaction speaks to the theme “Truth is Subjective”; she takes Grandfather’s assessment of the man at face value, even though Grandfather is clearly struggling with reality.