Ghosts and Mirrors

 We talked about this in class but I saw a lot of similarities between Ghosts and earlier works that we’ve read in class like “William Wilson” and “Mirrors”. Mr. Blue is struggling with this case in particular as it requires him to sit still and be alone with his thoughts as he is observing Mr. Black. As the days go on, Mr. Blue becomes resentful of Mr. Black because of what he is putting him through, just as Poe begins to resent William Wilson for always being there, to remind him of a part of him he’d rather keep hidden. But if this is the case I wonder what part of himself Mr. Blue wants to keep hidden, perhaps that he is unhappy with his life. You can see how the two might be linked, or that one is the mirrored image of the other– especially through their mirrored actions. As Blue sits by the window, taking notes on Black, Black mirrors the action, writing something of his own by the window. And when they both go into the store, Blue has to decide quickly whether to follow Black home or do some shopping of his own, because he is a mirrored image of Black he goes through the motions of shopping. The title Ghosts made me think about what this was referring to. I don’t particularly believe that Black was a ghost from the beginning, but I understand the word ghosts as another way of saying shadows. People often talk about shadows of themselves, referring to an alter ego or another world– like in Jordan Peele’s movie “Us” where the shadow selves try to take over. Similarly, in Ghosts the tension culminates in the final scene in Mr. Black’s house where the two fight it out and Blue kills Black. The same happens in Poe’s story, where the narrator stabs his alter ego to death. In all of these stories, the protagonist is almost unwilling to admit that the shadow self is the part of themselves that they dislike the most, and they manifest it into an entirely separate person. Black yells out, "You were the whole world to me, Blue, and now I’ve turned you into my death, " implying that perhaps they are one and the same and that a death to one is a death to the other. Black’s original plan was to kill Blue with him, wiping their shared existence away, however, Blue takes control of the situation and kills Black before he has the chance. In this scene, the image on the other side of the mirror wins and takes over the ego, but it is hard to tell which one is the shadow.

- Sarah Rosenthal