The Turn of the Screw

        When Henry James was struggling to sell his literary works, he tried one last time to get something published that would actually sell.  James didn't expect The Turn of the Screw to sell so much.  The different uses of ghosts really drew in many readers, like the use of the haunting effect and the connection between the living and the dead.

        The use of haunting in The Turn of the Screw was the main point of the story.  The evidence of this was when the governess first saw Peter Quint staring in the window.  When she found out from Mrs. Grose that he had in fact died a couple of years earlier, the governess thought she must of been seeing things.  Then when she saw the ghost of Miss. Jessel, she knew that she had in fact seen a ghost.  These random occurances of Miss. Jessel and Peter Quint played up the haunting effect that James created.  Who wouldn't be afraid of seening the ghosts of dead people staring at you through windows or from afar. 

        These strange apperances of Quint and Miss. Jessel also brang up the question of life beyond death, and if the governess was entirely insane or if she was really seeing these spiritual images of the deceased.  Is Peter Quint a real ghost?  Or is he actually still alive?  And when Mrs. Grose told the Governess that she could not see these ghosts that the governess could see, it really called into question if the governess still had her sanity.  This use of ghosts really tied into the haunting effect that was used in The Turn of the Screw by James.  

Potiki

        Patricia Grace's use of ghosts was not like Jame's use in Turn of the Screw.  There was no haunting in Grace's Potiki, but the arguement can be made that there was a connection between the living and the dead.  Grace also used spirits that represented wooden carvings or statues.

        Grace used these wooden carvings as different spririts or representations of their spiritual beliefs.  The use of ghosts were not as clear as James's so you had to dig deeper into the story to find the meaning of the spiritual beings.  One of the last chapters of the book definitely helped solve what the purpose of the ghosts were.  Toko's last chapter involved him explaining what happened to himself after he died.  So he was dead, but he was still explaining how he had died.  Toko's brother decided to make a wooden carving out of deceased brother to show that he had some spiritual power even after he died.  Grace's use of spiritual wooden carvings really tied in the plot of the novel.