My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses enslavement.

“I was seven years old before I understood the meaning of ‘bad’ and ‘good,’ because it was at that time I noticed carefully that my father married three wives as they were doing in those days, if it is not common nowadays.”

The first line of the novel introduces the motif of the meaning of “bad” and “good” and foreshadows the narrator’s eventual disappearance from his hometown. The use of the word “if” when discussing the present status of polyamorous marriages implies that the narrator will be removed from his home, resulting in uncertainty about shifting practices. The language also introduces a reflective tone that will carry on throughout the novel.

“But I did not know that all that I was thinking in mind was going to the hearing of the inhabitants of these three rooms, so at the same moment that I wanted to move my body to go the room from which the smell of the African’s food was rushing to me […] there I saw that these three rooms which had no doors and windows opened unexpectedly and three kinds of ghosts peeped at me, every one of them pointed his finger to me to come to him.”

This moment introduces the fantastical and magical elements that will take place throughout the novel while also foreshadowing many eventual plot points and symbols like the importance of traditional African foods. Once the narrator encounters these first ghosts, the narrative establishes that the bush contains a world that appears drastically different than the earthly town.

“[P]erformed a juju which changed me to a horse unexpectedly, then he put reins into my mouth and tied me on a stump with a thick rope.”

This is another moment in which the narrative illustrates the magical elements of the bush of ghosts, and this is the first time that the narrator changes to a new form other than his human self. When the narrator is enslaved by the smelling-ghost, he takes on the form of different animals to help make the ghost’s daily chores easier.