M.R.James is described as the master of the english ghost story with "Oh, whistle, and I'll
come to you, my lad" his most famous ghost story. Written in 1904, after the fin de siecle,
the piece is about the changing of one’s views and how things aren’t always at first glance
what they seem, especially at night.
At first, Parkins believes the commotion is due to rats, highlighting his sense of rationality: he
doesn’t believe in such superstitions as ghosts and thus it cannot be such causing the
ruckus. At the time this extract was written, society was changing, evolving: the setting of
Gothic tales morphed from a physical setting to that of the human body, examples being Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Dracula. The sense of rationality highlighted by Parkins is a
reflection of the fears and anxieties of the constantly changing world, with new scientific
discoveries and technology, new medical breakthroughs, and an ever-evolving world
emerging at this time.
When the screen breaks a “bright, frosty moon” is cast onto Parkins face: “frosty” suggests a
sense of coldness, as if winter has set in. Winter has connotations of darkness and danger
as well as that of despair throughout all of literature. Perhaps James decided to use this to
reflect how lonely Parkins is at this time and to foreshadow the despair he will soon feel at
the sight of the apparition in the bedsheets. Using weather to describe a character’s feelings
is part of pathetic fallacy. A classic example of pathetic fallacy in the Gothic is the title of
Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, the meaning of which is aggressive weather that
represents the nature of its residents.
The assonance of “sudden smooth… slipped” emits a sense a danger, as it sounds much
like the hissing of a snake: this could perhaps foreshadow the danger presented later in the
extract in the form of the bedsheets the spirit possesses. This sense of danger is also
reflected in the “band of dark shadow” the creature stands in. Shadows are created through
a lack of light: light represents life and hope, thus this could suggest that these shadows
represent a lack of hope in the situation playing out in the hotel room. They also bring about
a sense of oppression and gloom which could perhaps foreshadow the atmosphere later on
in the extract when the “creature” appears. This is a key part of the “terror” in the Gothic, fear
generated by obscurity and uncertainty, all about the psychological fear and repulsion we
experience reading such novels.
A common element in the Gothic is that of dreams. Dreams are themselves a liminal state,
being part way between life and death, reality and fantasy. In this extract, dreams come from
the narrator as they say, “in a dream 30 years back seen the same thing happen;” talking
about the horror yet to be played out. The use of dreams in the Gothic is intended to express
the dark, unconscious depths of the psyche, repressed by reason. Freud’s explanation of
repression is that we push desires from our conscious down into the unconscious part of our
psyche. Here, such dreams are used to show solidarity between Parkins and the unknown
narrator, as the narrator says that he too has seen this horror about to be played out to
Parkins as an occupant appears to rise from the “empty” bed, highlighting how we as
humans repress our fear of “monstrous” people so that it becomes the monster under our
beds, in our closets, right in front of our faces. Other gothic novels use dreams in a similar
way: for example, in Frankenstein, Victor finally creates his creature after two years of hard
work, but feels no elation due to the loathsome appearance. Exhausted, he falls into a
dream about kissing his wife, Elizabeth, who soon turns into the rotting corpse of Victor’s
