Ghost stories and narratives can take many different forms and change according to the history, location and culture of a place. What is considered scary in one culture could be dismissed as a fantastic tale or a comical narrative by another culture. The cultural values and every day narratives of the people in a certain physical location determines 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 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, the historical and the cultural references. For any ghost story to be successful the audience must be aware of the local folklore, customs and the story must be embedded within the local culture. This is true of horror and ghost stories too. For instance, the story of Dracula might be considered as a horror genre 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, but there are also certain similarities when it comes to universal themes such as fear, revenge and the methods handled 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 between 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 Thorall 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 beliefs. When all the villagers go the church, perhaps to protect themselves, he tells them they are superstitious and would rather encounter danger head on. He, however gets killed and becomes the ghost the kills people and ravages the village. In this story, fear works on two levels. The people of the village not only fear what is not known to them but also fear God. They also believe 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 Kei his neighbor 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 however leaves 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, 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 Rosary. None of these however work. It is only when the protagonists directly confront the ghost that their fear and eventually the ghosts leave. Harada gets to know the truth about Kei and Grettir confronts Glam.
The Ghosts can take many forms to scare the living but it 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 Adventures of the German Student” by Washington Irving is about the German student who takes home the 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 the 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 in to 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, Kei and the woman cannot move into the human world. They come and stay with the men for a while but cannot move into their world completely. In both the western and eastern cultures, the dead may return to live with the living and this is usually a cause for concern. The spirit of the dead can haunt a place or focus on retribution. The ghosts usually come back to avenge a personal injury that could not be done while alive. The ghost might focus on one person or the whole family. Sometimes the entire village can be the victim.
There are also however 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 after life and come back to haunt the living (Yoda & Alt 187). “Onnen is the driving idea of virtually all Japanese ghostly retribution narratives; it concerns those who dies 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. The Japanese ghost stories are also heavily populated by women who have been wronged or killed mercilessly in their lives. They are also usually portrayed as ghostly creatures with long flowing white dress, dishevelled black hair, no feet and a distorted face (Pruett, 2011). While the western ghosts wear whatever they died in or was buried in, most eastern ghosts are almost alike. The western culture has a lot of ghost stories, monsters as well as mythical creatures that America has taken to and modifies to suit its tastes. . In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King identifies three archetypical stories that he believes have shaped modern American horror: “Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Indeed, the themes in these stories have become so ingrained in American culture that horror (especially horror cinema) has become defined by these clichés (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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King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Everest House. 1981. p49.
Iwasaka, Michiko and Toelken Barre. Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death legends. Logan: Utah State University Press. 1994.
“Grettir the Strong”. Project Gutenberg. N.d. Web. 30 Mar 2016.
Yamada, Taichi. Strangers. Trans. Wayne Lammers. New York: Vertical. 2003.
Tatarczuk, Marcin. Kaidan. Petersburgh: Edo. 2011.
Washington, Irving. “ The Adventures of the German Student.”classiclit.about.com. n.d. Web. 30 Mar 2016.
Yoda, Hiroko and Alt, Matt. Yurei Attack: The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide. Osaki: Tuttle. 2012.
Perron, Bernard. Horror video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play. New York: McFarland. 2009.
Ericson, Joan. Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s Literature. Honlulu: University of Hawaii Press. 1997.
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