Lincoln in the Bardo

Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Lincoln in the Bardo INTRODUCTION RELATED LITERARY WORKS Lincoln in the Bardo borrows the term “Bardo” from The Bardo BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE SAUNDERS Thodol, a Tibetan text more widely known as The Tibetan Book of . Tibetan Buddhists use the word “Bardo” to refer to George Saunders was born in 1958 in Amarillo, Texas, but he the Dead grew up in Chicago. When he was eighteen, he attended the any transitional period, including life itself, since life is simply a Colorado School of Mines, where he graduated with a transitional state that takes place after a person’s birth and geophysical engineering degree in 1981. Upon graduation, he before their death. Written in the fourteenth century, The worked as a field geophysicist in the oil-fields of Sumatra, an Bardo Thodol is supposed to guide souls through the bardo that island in Southeast Asia. Perhaps because the closest town was exists between death and either reincarnation or the only accessible by helicopter, Saunders started reading attainment of nirvana. In addition, Lincoln in the Bardo voraciously while working in the oil-fields. A eary and a half sometimes resembles Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, since later, he got sick after swimming in a feces-contaminated river, Saunders’s deceased characters deliver long monologues so he returned to the United States. During this time, he reminiscent of the self-interested speeches uttered by worked a number of hourly jobs before attending Syracuse condemned sinners in The Inferno. Taken together, these two University, where he earned his Master’s in Creative Writing. texts inform Saunders’ look at the afterlife, combining these While studying at Syracuse, he met Paula Redick, one of his Eastern and Western theological writings with a comedic look peers in the writing program. Three weeks later, they were at spirituality. engaged to be married. Within three years of their marriage, the couple had two daughters, and Saunders took a job as a KEY FACTS technical writer. At this point he began writing books, • Full Title: Lincoln in the Bardo eventually publishing his first short story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Known primarily as a master of • When Published: February 14, 2017 short fiction, Saunders also writes travel and profile pieces for • Literary Period: Contemporary well-known outlets like The New Yorker and GQ. In 2017, his • Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Magical long-awaited debut novel was published and won him the Man Realism, Experimental Fiction Booker Prize. He has also won Guggenheim and MacArthur • Setting: As the title suggests, the majority of Lincoln in the fellowships, as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award. He Bardo takes place in the Bardo—a liminal space between currently teaches at Syracuse University’s Creative Writing death and rebirth—but this particular Bardo is set in Oak Hill Program. Cemetery in Washington, D.C. • Climax: The Reverend Everly Thomas sacrifices himself yb HISTORICAL CONTEXT moving on from the Bardo, thereby summoning a shock of “matterlightblooming” energy that blasts through a hellish takes place in February 1862, when Lincoln in the Bardo tendril wrapping around Willie Lincoln. President Abraham Lincoln’s third son, William Wallace Lincoln, died of what historians suspect was typhoid. As the president • Antagonist: A tendril made out of hellish souls. This tendril wraps around children who remain too long in the Bardo, and first lady grieved over their loss, the Civil War was only securing them in place for eternity. In a more general sense, nearing the end of its first year, meaning that the nation was the true antagonist of Lincoln in the Bardo is the Bardo- just beginning to fully grasp the magnitude of the conflict. dwellers’ inability to accept that they’ve died. Indeed, the war would last for another three years, totaling • Point of View: Lincoln in the Bardo is narrated as a series of roughly 620,000 deaths (and perhaps even upwards of monologues, as well as excerpts from both authentic and 750,000, as it’s difficult to estimate the death toll of a war invented historical sources documenting Abraham Lincoln’s fought before modern recordkeeping). Nearly a year after presidency. William’s death, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the nation’s slaves. This is of historical EXTRA CREDIT significance to Lincoln in the Bardo, since the novel ends with the soul of a former slave entering Lincoln’s body and traveling Film Rights. The actors Nick Offerman and Megan back to the White House with him—an image that alludes to Mullally—who are married to one another—purchased the film Lincoln’s resolve to end slavery. rights to Lincoln in the Bardo shortly after the novel was released in 2017. ©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Audiobook. When George Saunders decided he wouldn’t be has been unable to move, constantly “manifesting” as various able to serve as the sole reader for the audiobook version of horrible things. As Vollman, Bevins, the Reverend, and Willie Lincoln in the Bardo, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally offered approach, for example, she has taken the form of a “horrid to become involved, eventually bringing on an array of famous blackened furnace.” At first, she’s unwilling to speak, instead actors and authors, such as David Sedaris, Rainn Wilson, Carrie “transmuting” into a series of dismal objects. When the group Brownstein, Lena Dunham, Mary Karr, Miranda July, Ben almost leaves, though, she turns into her human form and tells Stiller, Susan Sarandon, and many more. Willie her tale, explaining that she always wanted a baby but never grew old enough to have intercourse, despite the fact that many suitors were interested in her. Her speech is very PLOT SUMMARY strange and punctuated by strong expletives, all of which she has learned in the Bardo and now can’t keep herself from using. Narrated in a series of monologues, Lincoln in the Bardo begins with the voice of Hans Vollman explaining how he died, though Listening to the Traynor girl has the intended effect on Willie. he won’t admit he has actually passed away. Just when he was When he leaves the fence behind, he tells his older guides that finally about to make love to his much younger wife for the first he now wants to move on, if he’s fated to become like her. time, he was struck by a light beam, rendering him unable to Relieved, Vollman, Bevins, and the Reverend prepare to say consummate their marriage. Since then, he has been dwelling goodbye, but Willie’s eyes suddenly fix on something behind here, in the Bardo, where he lies in what he calls a “sick-box.” them. Turning around, they see Abraham Lincoln walking Each night, he rises from this “sick-box” and joins people like toward them. Roger Bevins III, a friend of his who now interjects to help him Throughout the novel, Saunders intersperses the text with narrate his story, having heard it so many times. Bevins excerpts from various historical accounts of Lincoln’s eventually tells his own story, too, explaining that he slit his presidency, including biographies, letters, and other archival wrists because Gilbert, his lover, ended their furtive writings. Though too numerous to list here, these snippets relationship. As soon as he cut himself, though, Bevins provide a look at the President’s public life, his private life, and regretted it, realizing that life is a beautiful gift. Like Vollman, he the wide-ranging national opinion of him as a man and doesn’t think he’s dead—rather, he insists that he’s lying on the leader—an important perspective, considering that Lincoln in kitchen floor in a puddle of blood and waiting for his mother to the Bardo takes place during the first eary of the Civil War. find him. Using this method, Saunders describes a grand reception held Like all the souls in the Bardo, Vollman and Bevins physically at the White House several weeks before Willie’s death. As represent their attachments to the real world, attachments politicians made merriment downstairs, Willie was upstairs that ultimately keep them in the Bardo, a transitional space succumbing to his illness. All the while, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln meant to be a stopover for souls moving from life to the fretted over their boy, though the doctors assured them he’d afterlife. Vollman, for his part, has an eternal (and very large) make a fully recovery. This, of course, proved false, and Willie erection, which he must drag around wherever he goes. Bevins, died several weeks later—a fact that invites equal parts on the other hand, has many eyes, noses, ears, and hands, all of criticism and sympathy from the nation. which multiply when he thinks about the vast sensory Lincoln makes his way toward Vollman, Bevins, the Reverend, pleasures of being alive. As these two souls explain their and Willie, though he can’t see them. Coming to Willie’s physical appearances, they take note of Willie Lincoln, a young mausoleum, he opens the door and goes inside, where he slides boy who has just arrived in the Bardo. Children, they say, aren’t his son’s casket from the wall, sets it on the floor, and opens it. meant to “tarry” here, so they encourage him to “go on,” saying As he does so, Willie and his Bardo-dwelling friends drift into he must surely feel the urge to leave. Despite their attempts, the mausoleum and watch him reach down and cradle his son’s though, Willie merely says, “I feel I am to wait.” lifeless body.

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