Reading Notes Part A: Great Plains: The Ghost's Resentment

I really enjoyed this story and the moral of it.  What I really, I really liked about this story was the fact that it was the young man who was the one to wise and just one.  When we read stories about old men and young men, we often read about how the old men are the wisest of the group and the young men do not listen.  When they do not listen, they get into trouble or something bad happens to them.  I enjoyed this new narrative because it shows that you do not have to be old to be wise.  Another great part of this story is the fact that the young man was able to portray his disgust at the old men by pretending to be a ghost.  Most people would consider that cruel or being a jerk, but I do not.  Even though the young man did not know the man who died he did know that it was completely wrong to go cut off his clothing for them to make robes.  He felt that he wasn’t listened to because he was much younger than the other men and they just made him feel like a joke.  I would have to say that scaring the men off was payback and trying to be a good person to protect the dead.  We are often told that we should not mess with the dead because it is immoral and wrong.  These old men did not care about anything but the fact they couldn’t make a tent without the robe from the dead man.  Overall, I thought the moral of story is that we should respect the dead and not try to make light of a bad situation.

Ghost Following. (1899)

Frederick Coburn. Source: Wikicommons

Bibliography: Gibbs, Laura. Great Plains: The Ghost’s Resentment. Great Plains: The Ghost’s Resentment.