This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
Grief Must be Defeated
by Chris Hudson
Hi, my name is Chris Hudson and I’m an English professor at Amarillo College. I’ll be talking to you again about George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo.
I left off last time introducing the four main residents of the bardo. I theorized that the residents of the bardo could not let go of the world because of the stories they held onto. Stories are representations of the self; and each character retells their stories over and over, firmly maintaining their sense of self.
It is interesting, isn’t it, that America’s finest storyteller, makes stories complicit in the characters’ unwillingness to move on.
We have all heard, I’m sure, that stories are the things that define and preserve culture—even civilization. Yet in Saunders’ bardo, they stymie letting go. As we read the characters’ stories, we understand that they are self-centered, certainly not evolving, and a deterrence to moving on. And this might explain what Saunders is doing. He is not criticizing stories; he is criticizing the unwillingness to change. The characters in the bardo, we learn, are able to temporarily enter other characters—a kind of extreme notion of walking in someone’s shoes. In fact, even though Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins have heard each other’s stories thousands of times, they do not really understand each other until they join together. This makes them see beyond their own stories. It also allows them to experience empathy.
The overarching theme of this Fall’s read is grief. We’ve all heard of the various stages of grief and, truth be told, they are a handy way of interpreting the characters in the bardo. But if you’re like me, if someone says “Oh, you’re in denial,” you’d get mad. The stages are fine for clinical descriptions, but grief, if it does have stages, is all of them at once. Our grief cannot be parsed or dissected. When we grieve it is a profound, solitary experience.
Abraham Lincoln’s grief is the center of the novel. Almost every character enters him and learns something about him. His grief at first makes him question carrying on and leaves him awestruck by the grief caused by the Civil War. He later leaves with a new resolve after he makes peace with Willie’s death, influenced, it seems, by the spirits who have entered him. The loss of Willie and the losses of the war take on a different, deeper meaning for him. He understands he has to free himself of darkness and continue his work. He thinks of Willie as, quote “being in some bright place, free of suffering, resplendent in a new mode of being.”
This new mode of being is a key to understanding the novel as well. Lincoln begins to understand that change, not permanence, is the essence of the world, the opposite of what the residents of the bardo believe.
Lincoln also realizes that quote “the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering […] and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact.”
Lincoln’s epiphany is twofold: a recognition of impermanence and the need for empathy. This epiphany is in fact acted out by Hans Vollman and Roger Bevins who have entered Lincoln and express his thoughts. Lincoln concludes “Our grief must be defeated; it must not become our master, and make us ineffective . . . our Wille would not wish us hobbled in that attempt by a vain and useless grief.”
I hope you return to the bardo and the world Saunders’ creates and experience the empathy that can be manifested by grief.
For HPPR’s Radio Readers Book Club, I’m Chris Hudson. Thanks for listening!
