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Smoke Ghost
Smoke Ghost
Smoke Ghost
SMOKE GHOST
elevator in his office block, and how so much centres around its rise and fall. Height represents status and
security, on the one hand, but with height comes an undefined sense of threat. Worry about losing their.
It had all begun on the elevated. There was a particular little sea of roofs he had grown into the habit of glancing at
just as the packed car carrying him homeward lurched around a turn. A dingy, melancholy little world of tar-paper,
tarred gravel and smoky brick. Rusty tin chimneys with odd conical hats suggested abandoned listening posts.
There was a washed-out advertisement of some ancient patent medicine on the nearest wall. Superficially it was
like ten thousand other drab city roofs. But he always saw it around dusk, either in the smoky half-light, or tinged
with red by the flat rays of a dirty sunset, or covered by ghostly wind-blown white sheets of rain-splash, or patched
with blackish snow; and it seemed unusually bleak and suggestive, almost beautifully ugly, though in no sense
picturesque; dreary but meaningful.
Wran it represents certain disagreeaible aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the
jangled century of hate and heavy industry and total wars (270). Yet, there is more to it than that. The phrases
sea of roofs and little world suggest that it is somehow cut off from the life of the streets altogether yet it is also, in
that nightly glance, the receptacle of Wrans concerns and has somehow given them a life of some sort. Height
represents status and security, on the one hand, but with height comes an undefined sense of threat. Worry
about losing their.
Its the nature of that life that is perhaps the most disturbing part of the story. First, there is the endless
contaminative drift of the soot that seems to pervade Wrans office, followed by a shapeless black sack that
gradually acquires a misshapen head, turns into a sodden, distorted face of sacking and coal dust and
becomes by turns a Negro, when he seeks to clarify what his doctor sees through the window, and then,
according to his doctors account, a white man in blackface. You see, the colour didnt seem to have any brown in
it. It was dead-black (273) before, finally, emerging in his sons cries of black man, black man (274). We might
begin to wonder again about those workers whom Wran catalogues and transforms into a composite ghostly face,
smoky and masked, and about what aspects of the twentieth century do frighten Wran.
Whats also fascinating about this story is the way in which Wran sets about dealing with his experience, attempting
to explain it away through psychology, drawing on his childhood experiences as what he calls a sensory prodigy
and his mothers attempts to transform him into a medium. If we notice a sense of disconnection and confusion in
Wrans experiences as an adult, the childhood discrepancy is even stronger, at least if we are to believe Wrans
own account. His matter-of-fact statement that he can see people through walls contrasts sharply with his
description of his mothers agonising attempts to persuade him to see dead people, dismissing his actual ability,
supposing we accept it as being real, trying instead to find something that is not there. Or rather, given the timing,
one might wonder if his mother understood that spiritualism thrives in time of war and that Wrans skills, properly
channelled, might provide her with solace or, more prosaically, with reflected glory. Its a complex emotional nexus,
not least with the involvement of the researchers and Wrans failure to deliver to order.
Again, in his final encounter with the spirit of the city, embodied in Miss Millick, herself representative of so many
city workers, one has the sense that Wran is caught somewhere between scientific modernity and something older,
buried deep in the human imagination, that been carried into the city and is now seeking to find a way to express
itself with the tools at hand. I hesitate to use the word primeval but its tempting to look back to Blackwoods The
Willows.
And indeed, for all this talk of modernity, what strikes me about Leibers story is how much it draws on the past as
well, wearing its Jamesian influences very clearly: in particular The Mezzotint and Oh Whistle and Ill Come to
You, My Lad come to mind. At the same time, Leiber very deftly captures that particular experience of riding home
at night along suburban train lines, looking out over the roofs and seeing a peculiar high-rise world that is invisible
from street level.
SMOKE GHOST
And possibly, in the end, it is all about imagination. Wrans focus on that cluster of roofs every evening has
somehow brought something into being but when he acknowledges its power, submits to it even, something vital is
lost. One wonders then what bargains the other wooden-faced passengers have made.
Because the psychiatrist asked him to, and because he had mentioned that there was something about
his childhood that might be affecting him now.
He was a clairvoyant, he could do things like see through walls, and read peoples thoughts. He could see
things that other people couldnt.
SMOKE GHOST
She tried to make him communicate with the spirits of the dead.
At first the tests seemed to show that he was a clairvoyant , but when the psychologists tried to
demonstrate his powers in public, Cates became nervous and the demonstration was a failure.
He feels happier and more confident.
Because he sees a black face staring in at he window.
The doctor is nervous and scared.
Smudges of soot.
He had confirmed that the black figure really existed.
Section 3
Character
Catesby is in his thirties. He is married with a son. He works in advertising. He had special psychic powers as a
child.
Miss Millick is a secretary. She is single. We get the impression that she is not as well educated as Catesby. The
opening section of the story is told from her point of view. She tells us that Catesby is acting in a way that is strange
for him.
The ghost is black. It has a face. It can move quickly. We dont know if its real or not. Not everybody can see it.
SMOKE GHOST
Miss Millick. So that we see Catesby from a different angle. She is an ordinary person, introducing us to this
extraordinary story.
When Miss Millick leaves the room. The ghost appears to him, or is in his head. The internal action in Catesbys
head is far more interesting that the external facts that Miss Millick sees and experiences.
When he was a young boy and he was thought to have psychic powers;
When he first saw the black figure of the ghost. The flashbacks place the past events in the context of the present
events and shows how they are connected.
Maybe Catesby can see the ghost because of his special powers;
We see how the sightings of the ghost built up and have created Catesbys present state of mind.
Atmosphere
Style
Adjectives: They are all negative. Dark, dirty, depressing.
Metaphors:
What the rooftop and the ghost represent: adjectives frustrated, frightened, jangled. (Suggested answer)
Half darkness is significant because Catesby may be imagining what he sees he is tired and the light is fading.
Prowler noun [C] UK /pra.lr/
someone who moves around quietly in a place, trying not to be seen, often before committing a crim