This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
We Will All Enter the Bardo
by Marjory Hall
Greetings from Goodwell, Oklahoma! I’m Marjory Hall with a BookByte for our new 2025 Fall Read. Voracious readers might well be those that most appreciate when an author provides us with a truly fresh approach to the novel. In his Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders has conjured a multi-layered work of unique voice, structure, and theme. If Saunders were a musician, this book could be described as hitting clear notes in four, maybe even five octaves. I will make a quick recommendation to fans of audio books. My first experience with this novel was as an audio book. When I later read it in print, I realized that I had missed most of the novel’s nuance because its form conveys a great deal of its context.
If one interprets the “Lincoln” in the title as Abraham, the symbolism of his being in the bardo is a powerful expression of the excruciating situation of a president whose nation is drenched in the blood of a civil war. As Lincoln, himself, observed in his “House Divided” speech, in order to exist the nation must become “all one thing, or all the other” (par. 9). Saunders presents Willie Lincoln’s death as a metaphor for the United States in the Civil War: the passing of a beloved, bright, optimistic creature and the burden of the survivors to somehow carry on after it is gone. This book is partly about Abraham Lincoln coming to terms with the knowledge of his beloved son’s being irrevocably gone from this life.
The term “bardo,” however, is generally a spiritual term, describing those transitional periods a soul experiences between incarnations or in any passage from one level of existence to another. When read in this context, the reader must notice the other Lincoln in the bardo—young Willie. There is no shortage of books that delve into the anguish of survivors, but Lincoln in the Bardo gives voice to the grief and fear of the deceased. Willie’s companions in the graveyard are stranded in the bardo because they fear the unknown beyond it. President Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech again communicates Saunder’s theme. In times of fear, Lincoln advises calm consideration of the situation, arguing that “[i]f we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it” (par. 1).
From the beginning of life, people pass through stages they will experience only once. There is only one helpless infancy, one blooming youth, and one vigorous maturity. There is no return possible, and the phase after this life is an enormous mystery. Living with the certainty that we and everyone we love will one day pass into that mystery is, in fact, at the root of many religious and philosophical convictions. Saunders shows us that we must step into the unknown with the same trust that we exercised in navigating our infancy, youth, and maturity. No matter how apprehensive a person on the brink of a new stage of life feels, that person inevitably comes through to continue their journey. With a clear sense of where we are on our life journey, we can determine where we wish to go, and we can take those leaps of faith that enable us to get there, in this world and the next.
I’m Marjory Hall from Goodwell, Oklahoma, with a Book Byte for Fall, 2025.
Work Cited
Lincoln, Abraham. speech to the Illinois Republican State Convention, Springfield, IL, June 16, 1858, https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/housedivided.htm.
