Ghost stories and narratives can take many different forms and change according to history, location and culture. What is considered scary in one culture could be dismissed as a fantastic tale or a comical narrative by another. The cultural values and everyday narratives of the people in a certain location determine what is scary and what is not. The West and the East have different cultural values and beliefs. They differ not only in simple matters such as greeting a stranger but also in the principles that govern their conduct in life and business. These differences are also evident in their literature. Some stories and narratives can be hard to understand by non-natives because they are not familiar with the folklore or the historical cultural references. For any story to be successful the audience must be aware of the local folklore and customs, and the story must be embedded within the local culture. This is true of horror and ghost stories too. For instance, Dracula might be considered as a horror model in many countries, while it can be seen as an impossible fictitious tale by others. However, there are also certain universal motifs, themes and elements that are common to ghost stories across the world. Ghost stories in the Western world and the Eastern world have a lot of differences owing to their culture, history, and codes of conduct. There are also certain similarities when it comes to universal themes such as fear, revenge, and the methods employed by the common people to get rid of ghosts. Thus it can be said that ghost stories like any other genre of literature are a product of their different cultures and this accounts for the many differences among them. However, fear, revenge and the desire to get rid of the ghost are universal and these are the similarities that can be seen in them.
The themes of fear and revenge are common in almost all of the ghost stories across the world. Ghosts are able to successfully scare living men only because men have a fear of the unknown. “Every culture which remains alive is well supplied with codes of everyday behavior and value, along with attendant emotions, regardless of how many philosophies it may have borrowed or how literate and sophisticated its members may be” (Iwasaka & Towelken 4-5). Fear is one such emotion. No matter how educated a person is, he or she almost always falls prey to the fear of the unknown or something that cannot be rationally explained or conquered. Ghost stories prey on this fear of the unknown, and are successful because they terrify their audiences. In the ghost story, “Grettir the Strong: Grettir’s Saga,” the real problem that afflicts the lands of Thorhall largely remains unknown. There is however, fear among the servants and Shepherds who work there, as many are killed.
Glam is a strong man who starts working in the field as a shepherd and claims that he is not afraid of the ghost or the supernatural thing that seems to kill everyone. He not only makes light of the fear of the villagers about the ghost, but also their other beliefs. When all the villagers go church, perhaps to protect themselves, he tells them they are superstitious that he would rather encounter danger head on. However, he gets killed and becomes in turn the ghost that kills people and ravages the area. In this story, fear works on two levels. The people of the area not only fear what is not known to them, but they also fear God, believing that faith in God would keep them safe. By not acknowledging the fear, Glam falls prey and eventually becomes the ghost.
Strangers, a Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada, is another example of how fear works in ghost stories. In the novel, Harada, the protagonist, meets his neighbor Kei, who wants to share a bottle of champagne with him. He gives her the cold shoulder and soon forgets about her. When he later goes to his hometown, he sees his dead parents. Soon after he feels ill and out of sorts and believes it is his parents’ ghosts that are bothering him. But Mamiya, his agent, tells him that it isn’t his parents but the ghost of the neighbor he had cold shouldered. She commits suicide out of loneliness and hovers over Harada’s life. Kei, leaves however once Harada learns the truth. He realizes that Kei is a ghost, and this makes Kei reveal her true form and disappear. As long as Harada does not know what is ailing him, he is scared. Once he knows the truth and the illusion is shattered, he is able to get back to normalcy again. In both the works of Western and Eastern ghost stories, the fear of the unknown acts as a primary reason the protagonists are scared. There are also instances in the novel when the people try to get rid of the ghost, like going to church or Mamiya trying out praying and using the Rosary. None of these works, it is only when the protagonists directly confront the ghosts that their fear subsides, and eventually the ghosts leave.
The ghosts can take many forms to scare the living, but they can never stay in the human world. This is another similarity between the ghost stories of the Western and Eastern tradition. “The spirits reside in a realm of their own, adjacent to our world, called takai (other world), in which space and time differ from those of the world of the living, and which they can relatively freely leave at any time, crossing the borders for limited periods of time; a ghost cannot, however, change its nature and stay in the human world” (Tatarczuk 29-30). The short story, “The Adventure of the German Student” by Washington Irving, is about a German student who takes home a girl who haunts his dreams. He sees her sitting on his stairs one night, lonely and sad, and takes her to his rooms. They get close to each other. However, in the morning, he realizes that she is dead. Only after the cops come in does he know that she was not real, but was the spirit of a woman who was guillotined the previous night. The student is left with her corpse. Although he can touch her and talk to her, she cannot completely move into the human world. The same is true of Kei in the Strangers. Although Harada and Kei enjoy physical intimacy just as the student and the woman do, Kei and the woman cannot move into the human world. In both the Western and Eastern cultures, the dead may return to life with the living, and this is usually a cause for concern. The spirits of the dead can haunt a place or focus on retribution, often coming back to avenge a personal injury that could not be addressed while alive. The ghost might focus on one person or the whole family. Sometimes the entire village can be the victim.
Eastern stories also take a political approach as is evident from some of the features observed in them. As so often happens with politics, wars are used to achieve the ambitions of different political factions. Compromises and alliances are also common in politics. For instance, in Tolkien's story, Morgoth is the supreme leader who lives in middle earth. Different factions have the intention of overcoming Morgoth. However, he is very strong therefore an alliance is formed between the humans and the elves. Political themes and references to political institutions are common in Eastern writings. Political themes are rare in Western writings but alliances are not. For instance, Van Helsing, Renfield, and the professor, being the only ones who believe in the existence of Dracula form an alliance in an attempt to exterminate him (Dietz, and Bram Stoker 73). Even if political allusions come up in Western writings, it does not happen as explicitly as in Eastern stories.
Nevertheless, there are also a lot of differences between the Western ghost stories and the Eastern ghost stories. The revenge theme, or retribution, is quite strong in the Eastern ghost stories, especially the Japanese ghost stories. The tales are based on the concept of Onnen- an intense feeling that reaches the afterlife and comes back to haunt the living (Yoda & Alt 187). “Onnen is the driving idea of virtually all Japanese ghostly retribution narratives; it concerns those who die while in the throes of intense emotion. Usually, onnen is a grudge or need for vengeance, a hatred of someone who has been wronged, which comes from the consciousness of being a victim” (Pruett 2010, Perron 2009 and Ericson 1997). The ghost stories of Yatsuya and Kaidan are Japanese ghost stories based on onnen. In the ghost stories of Yatsuya, Oiwa takes a bloody revenge on everyone who was responsible for poisoning her and killing her family. She also eventually drives her husband mad and makes her brother-in-law kill him. Her desire for retribution comes from her painful death and the intense feelings she has while dying. Although many Hollywood movies have come out as adaptations of this concept, Onnen still remains a characteristic feature of the Japanese ghost story.
Another difference in the two stories refers to their corresponding settings. Indeed, the setting of the two stories is a very obvious aspect, and as much as they portray religious theme, the two stories vary on the account of religion; the religions observed are different in the two stories. Dracula is set in a period where people observe traditional religion. Superstitions are therefore, bound to be plenty of the story. Those superstitions during the Victorian era usually led to great fear among the people, therefore, the author wrote about something that his audience would conceive to be possible, but probably none of them had ever seen. Stoker's character, Dracula is given some human qualities within the story, and even a name which makes it possible for the ordinary people to identify him despite him being a supernatural being. He also loves in the land of the humans which makes the story more relatable to the audience. Tolkien's story is set in a strange world. The story takes place on earth, but in an abstract location, somewhere around middle earth (Tolkien 99). The creatures presented in his story are strange, unlike the many humans in Dracula. Of course, nobody has been to a place called middle-earth in real life, and very few people if any, have met an elf in person. Eastern stories, therefore, push the limits of reality further than Western stories. Western stories attempt to merge reality with a little bit of fiction whereas Eastern authors do the opposite, they combine a great deal of fictional writing with a small amount of reality. Western authors are therefore likelier to invoke greater emotion, specifically horror in their readers than their Eastern counterparts. However, this is not to say that Eastern writings are less believable than Eastern writings. If that were the case, then Eastern stories would not have got their global acclaim. Eastern authors like Tolkien present fiction in a fascinating perspective, thereby diverting their audience's attention into the world where everything that can be imagined can become reality.
Moreover, the two stories differ in the manner in which both writers present a struggle in their works; they present these features in different ways. Eastern authors like Tolkien show a struggle involving a large number of people, even armies at times. For instance, in The Simillarion, the elves use an army to attack Morgoth in middle earth. They present conflict with greater intensity than their Western counterparts. The fight between good and evil in Eastern writings is shown to take place with different groups fighting for the same cause, but ultimately, one section takes charge and puts an end to the fight. Western writing on the other hand, credits success to a single individual or small group of people. For instance, in Bram Stocker’s Dracula, Jonathan and Morris are credited with getting rid of Dracula after they cut off his head. Very little attention is paid to many other characters who were crucial in trying to get rid of Dracula.
Another difference between Eastern stories and Western stories is in their presentation of supernatural creatures. Eastern stories give such characters negative features that push the audience to a great dislike of that character. They do not attempt to justify the wrongs committed by such a character. Morgoth is presented as a dislikeable character that has to be overcome for the good of all the inhabitants of the earth in Tolkien's The Simillarion. However, this is not the case with Western writings. Although they do not indicate that evil is acceptable, at times, they give some justification as to why the supernatural character may have committed an evil deed. For instance, in Twilight, the thirst for blood is very difficult for vampires to resist. In Dracula, Van Helsing finds Mina drinking blood from a man, but he seems to sympathize with her since it is an urge that is difficult to control (Duda 16). The way Eastern writers’ present evil is, therefore, different from the way. Western writers present evil. Western writers make an attempt to put their audience in the same situation as a character who is committing some evil, and then ask themselves, what I would do. For Eastern writers, evil is plainly evil, and committing some evil act should never be an option.
Japanese ghost stories are also heavily populated by women who have been wronged in their lives or killed mercilessly. They are also usually portrayed as ghostly creatures with long flowing white dress, disheveled black hair, no feet and a distorted face (Pruett, 2011). While the Western ghosts wear whatever they died in or were buried in, most eastern ghosts are quite similar to each other. The Western culture has a lot of ghost stories, evils, as well as mythical creatures that America has taken to and modifies to suit its tastes. For example, Stephen King reiterates on three archetypical stories in his book the Danse Macabre. These three stories, the author believes have immensely contributed in shaping the American horror. These three stories are the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The three stories have become intractable entwined in the American culture, and they commonly used in the horror cinema (King 49). What makes the Western ghost stories different from the Eastern ghost stories is the fact that in the Western ghost stories, the plot is more or less the same, and the ending can be known well in advance. Eastern ghost stories however, are much more layered and complicated, and the reader is left to think for a long time as to what caused the ghosts to come back and kill or torture people.
Thus the Western and the Eastern ghost stories are similar and different in many aspects, and this is due to their history, culture, and location. Although they are united by the common themes of fear and revenge, they are also different owing to the distinct beliefs and codes of conduct of the people they are written or made for.
Works Cited
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