46 pages • 1 hour read
James ThurberThe Night the Ghost Got In
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1933A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Young James Thurber
A fictionalized version of a young James Thurber is the protagonist and narrator of the story. If the age of the character James Thurber aligns with the age of Thurber as the author, the protagonist is 21 years old. Thurber displays a desire to take on the role of “the man of the house” in the absence of his father and one of his brothers, volunteering to go downstairs to phone the police and let them inside. Thurber’s mother prevents him, emphasizing that Thurber is still a young man. His attempts to take charge are humorously contrasted with Thurber spending the story wearing first only his bath towel and then his mother’s blouse. Thurber’s youth and ridiculous attire throughout the ordeal make the police regard him with suspicion. In positioning himself as the narrator, Thurber positions himself as the voice of reason, charging himself with the task of applying logic in the present to a past event where rationale is absurdly absent.
Herman and Mrs. Thurber
Herman is one of Thurber’s brothers, and Mrs. Thurber is the boys’ mother. These characters are driven by irrational fear and erratic behavior. Herman exhibits more external fear than his brother. When Thurber starts to take his brother downstairs to scope out the scene and calm their mother, Herman declines, saying he’ll “stay with mother” because “she’s all excited” (33). Though Herman uses his mother’s excitability as an excuse to stay behind, there is some level of truth to it—Mrs. Thurber is easily excited. Instead of waiting for her sons to answer her when she asks about the noise, she, like her son, “intuits” that burglars are responsible. She then escalates the situation by throwing a shoe at their neighbors’ window and getting the police involved. Her impulsivity is coupled with moments of rationality so absurd it loops back around to irrational: She stops Thurber from going downstairs to let the police in, not because he could be in danger from what she believes are burglars, but because he’d “catch [his] death” letting the police in wearing only a bath towel.
Grandfather
Though the entire Thurber family present in the story is depicted as absurd, Grandfather’s absurdity is heightened and justified by his age. After intervening when the police burst in on Grandfather, Thurber very calmly says, “That was Grandfather” (38) in a way that informs the reader that these kinds of episodes are commonplace in the Thurber household. Grandfather’s “phase” of flashing back to the Civil War is played to humorous effect, but there’s a significance in the fact that Grandfather is the only aspect of the story that directly references war. He is the only character to face the strange events of the night head on, setting him apart from the rest of the family and putting his attitude towards retreat and desertion into a greater context.
Related Titles
By James Thurber
