President Lincoln’s son Willie has died, and has now joined the ghosts at the cemetery. Most of the ghosts have stayed behind because they were not ready to move on – with the exception of the reverend Everly Thomas, who thought he was ready but who has fled from judgment at the last instant. Most of the ghosts have not accepted the fact that they have died, believing vaguely but strongly that whatever was on their mind when they were taken from the world can still be achieved. They will still be able to sleep with their wife after healing from their injury and getting out of the ‘sick-box’; or they can yet reverse their ill-advised suicide attempt.
So they linger: there is this one story they identify with, which determines the physical shape they take and which makes them oblivious to reality and to each other. For endearing as their stories often (but not always) are, these souls are guilty of self-obsession – even where they have sometimes come to be joined at the hip “from their many years of mutual flattery” (207), like Professor Edmund Bloomer and Lawrence T. Decroix. “’Thank you so much, for saying my pickles were excellent’ […] ‘They were like my work: the greatest in the world at that time’”, the two are perpetually reassuring themselves (209-210).
And all the ghosts congratulate each other on their courage; on having the strength to stay as there are so many forces trying to persuade them to move on. So many people cave because they “lack the necessary resolve”; “nothing matters sufficiently to them, that is the thing.” (103) Still, the ghosts are aware that when a child fails to move on, this is an awful thing; and Willie, to his peril, feels encouraged by his father’s visits to his tomb to hang around. Now the demons will come and take him, for some reason that doesn’t become quite clear – other than the demons’ insistence that life hasn’t treated them fairly either.
The protagonists – Hans Vollman, Roger Bevins, and the Rev Everly Thomas – now see themselves faced with a sudden sense of duty, and they take it upon themselves to get Lincoln to encourage his son to move on. This is a difficult undertaking, for it is unclear whether the dead can actually influence the thoughts of the living. But they can enter their thoughts, and, crucially, enter them together, thus becoming immersed once again in the interests and stories of others. This is how we enter Lincoln’s stream of consciousness, and witness an internal monologue from the depths of sorrow, from a failing President who sees the world falling apart around him, under his responsibility, and who now finds himself haunting a graveyard at night and pondering the moral implications of his own despair.
“He is just one. And the weight of it about to kill me. Have exported this grief. Some three thousand times. […] May not have the heart for it.” (155)
Lincolns wills himself to admit that his son’s body, though it was dear to him, is not his son; but he leaves the tomb too soon, it seems, for Willie to get the message; Hans Vollman tries to get him to stay – “I […] supplied the most precise mental images I could conjure, of him staying: sitting; being content to sit; sitting comfortably, finding peace via the process of staying, etc., etc.” (244) – but it is no use. A cathartic scene follows, where all the ghosts enter Lincoln together and become aware of his world and of each other. After trying to save Willie themselves and being chased by the demons, the ghosts now take refuge in a chapel, where they find Lincoln remembering his son. Here Willie witnesses him reminding himself that his son is dead, and, in realizing this, liberates himself, his father, and all other ghosts from their half-delusions. Willie moves on, and many of the other ghosts instantly follow his example.
What they are liberated from, it seems, is their reduction to their unfulfilled desires and obsessions. They finally change their previously fixed appearance, briefly taking on every form they would have taken in their uncompleted lives. In a heart-warming and heart-breaking scene, Roger Bevins reminds Hans Vollman that his wife has remarried, that she visited his grave to tell him that she will not be joining him there; and Hans Vollman reminds Roger Bevins that he cut his wrists and bled to death. “Yes […] Yes I did. […] So many years ago.” (328) Together, they decide to set one last thing right that has nothing to do with why they thought they had stayed; and then they leave. “There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still.” (334)
Lincoln finds, not less sadness, but more; not peace, but resolve: he will not now let his deep and ongoing sense of individual tragedy withhold him from doing the right thing. The ghost that follows him until the end of the book is not that of his son, but of a black slave (“Sir, if you are as powerful as I feel you are, and as inclined toward us as you seem to be, endeavor to do something for us, so that we might do something for ourselves”, 312). This theme connects the historical, the existential, and the fictional-supernatural threads in Lincoln in the Bardo: realizing and accepting that there is a world outside of you and your own thoughts, stories and interests, is good. Connecting to others helps, because it gets you out of a self-centered loop, but it is not all; there is a time simply to let go; to let go even of these connections, and do what is right.
Though the ghosts are often portrayed as silly and petty, they are not made to look silly simply for loving life; the book does not justify its message by downplaying the strength of the pull that our own life and love exercise upon us. Hans Vollman, Roger Bevins and the Reverend have reasons really, really not to want to be dead. But the unmistakable, larger-than-life heroes of the book are Willie and Abraham Lincoln – Willie, through whom the ghosts and his own father are redeemed; and Abraham Lincoln, who will go on to do good in spite of the costs, his sense of good being in the end undefeated by his sense of loss.
“His heart loved goodness most.
So good. Dear little chap. Always knew the right thing to do. And would urge me to do it. I will do it now. Though it is hard. All gifts are temporary. I unwillingly surrender this one. And thank you for it. God. Or world. Whoever it was gave it to me, I humbly thank you, and pray that I did right by him, and may, as I go ahead, continue to do right by him.
Love, love, I know what you are.” (246)