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76 pages 2 hours read

Tim Tingle

How I Became a Ghost: A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2013

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Chapters 8-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary: “Walking People”

Father and Luke kill a deer when they go hunting that afternoon, and the family eats deer for the first time since they left their home.

The next morning, everyone in the swamp who took a blanket from the Nahullos is sick with smallpox, and Father tells the family they will leave in the morning. Isaac and his family see a group of Choctaws walking down a road, and they follow them.

Isaac asks Jumper if he ever sees ghosts, and Jumper tells him that he does and worries that it means he will soon be a ghost. Three days after beginning to follow the Choctaws on the road, Father speaks with one of them, and the families begin travelling together. The other family consists of Gabe, Ruth, and their child, Nita. Father sees that these Choctaws have blankets and finds out they came from the Nahullo soldiers, so he declines to take any. Isaac has a vision of Mister Jonah, who tells Isaac that the ghosts are waiting for him and that the blankets this new group of Choctaws have are safe. He tells Father the blankets are safe, and Father agrees to get some the next morning.

Chapter 9 Summary: “Nita and the Ghost Walkers”

Once the family gets blankets, they are warm for the first time since they left their home. During their walk, Nita asks Isaac to be her big brother, and Isaac agrees. Isaac cuts pieces off his blanket to cover Nita’s feet and protect her while walking on the icy road. A storm blows in as they sleep that night, and they must start walking without breakfast. The sleet does not stop until just before sunset, and they make camp and eat for the first time that day. Soldiers bring them milk and corn for their supper.

The next day is the coldest day of their walk, and Isaac has a vision where Mister Jonah visits him and tells him that he and Missus Jonah, along with all the other Choctaw ghosts, are looking out for him. He warns Isaac that this day will be a challenge.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Bloody Footprints”

Isaac declines his Mother’s and Father’s advice to stand by the fire and move around to get warm during the noon meal on the trail. He stands in one place under a tree away from the fire instead because he wants to stay dry. Father yells when it is time to start walking again, but Isaac is unable to move. Nita asks to walk with Isaac, but Isaac tells her to walk with her mother instead, since he is worried that this is the time he will become a ghost. He sees that everyone has left the camp, and Luke tells him that he is falling behind. Isaac pulls his feet off the ice where they are stuck, and he leaves bloody footprints behind him.

In pain, Isaac asks for his ordeal to be over, which triggers a vision of a ghost world beckoning to him. He resists but is lost in the vision until Father yells at him to take one last look backward and then forget about it as he makes his way forward. As he does this, his feet begin to heal.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Nita’s Walk”

Nita gifts Isaac with the blanket shoes he made for her, and Isaac makes new ones for Nita. They stay close during their walk that day, and as the day winds down, Isaac has a vision in which Nita dies with a swollen face and spider crawling across her. The vision troubles Isaac, and he tells Luke about it hoping for help. But Nita rolls out of her blanket overnight and is covered by snow. By the time her mother wakes up and notices, Nita is dead. Women from other camps come to comfort Ruth. The soldiers notice the delay and come to see Nita dead, to which they remark that there is now one less person to feed.

Chapters 8-11 Analysis

Isaac learns to employ the Choctaws’ approach to pain and trauma in his trials on the trail. When he hurts his feet, he is lost in his pain until his father tells him, “you cannot keep your eyes on the bloody footprints behind you. You must keep your eyes on where you are going” (48). This echoes what Old Man told the Choctaws after their houses had been burned to the ground: “We can talk about last night later. Now we go to work” (20), as well as what Isaac saw when the old women were performing their ritual in the river. Isaac learning how to move forward despite his bloody footprints is the culmination of his experiences in his Choctaw community.

Nita’s family welcoming Isaac’s family establishes the thematic importance of community. Their close relationship improves Isaac’s situation and Nita’s situation. In becoming Nita’s big brother, Isaac gains perspective on how Luke feels being Isaac’s big brother. He also gains a new sense of responsibility and related worry, asking himself “If I am a ghost, how can I take care of Nita?” (41). He utilizes what he has learned from injuring his feet by shifting his focus to what he can do instead of what he cannot do. He decides, “I could take care of Nita, as best I could, while I was still alive” (41).

With it being clear that the Nahullos sickened the Choctaws with blankets, the relationship between the Nahullos and Choctaws is further complicated in these chapters. On one hand, different Nahullos soldiers provide blankets that are safe and free of disease. On the other hand, some Nahullos consider Nita’s death a blessing to them. With these events, Tingle moves from a one-dimensional portrayal of the Nahullos toward a more multi-faceted characterization. This differentiation sets the stage for the challenges posed by the Nahullos in rescuing Naomi, when the same Nahullos shifts from posing a danger to the Choctaws to offering legitimate assistance to the Choctaws.

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