Lincoln in the Bardo

“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise.”

Roger captures the tragedy of the ghosts in the cemetery. Doomed forever to remember what they missed out on, they can only look back with longing and have nothing to look forward to. They dwell enviously on the past, seemingly appreciating life more than the living.

“One feels such love for their little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them, such fondness for that set of attributes manifested uniquely in each: mannerism of bravado, of vulnerability, habits of speech and mispronouncement and so forth; the smell of the hair and head, the feel of the ting hand in yours—and then the little one is gone! Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.”

The deep heartache of losing a child carries a specific kind of danger—love with no source becomes “searching and sick.” To Saunders’s readers, this warning is a reminder of Mrs. Lincoln, whose psyche was permanently shattered by her son’s death, and an alarming note about the possibility that the president will also succumb to the same kind of desperation.

“His leading trait seemed to be a fearless and kindly frankness, willing that everything should be as different as it pleased, but resting unmoved in his own conscious single-heartedness.”

Chapter 18 is dedicated to memories of Willie Lincoln. Characterizing Willie through the words of others, these memories exemplify how the living consider the dead. Willie longer speaks for himself. Instead, we can only know him through unreliable historical records. Did these people know him well? Were they only projecting their own childhoods and personalities onto him? There is no real way to know.

“As if one were still worthy of affection and respect? It was cheering. It gave us hope.”

President Lincoln’s visit to Willie’s grave and his affectionate rocking of Willie’s dead body surprises the ghosts in the bardo, most of whom have long been forgotten by the living who tend to treat dead bodies without respect. Seeing Lincoln’s loving behavior causes the spirits to reevaluate their worth.

“To whom do you speak? I said. Who is hearing you? To whom do you listen? Whose hand do you now follow, as it lifts to point to the heavens? What is the source of the voice causing those looks of consternation to appear even now upon your faces? Here I am. I am here. Am I not?”

Hans’s defense against the matterlightblooming phenomenon is based on his autonomy and corporeality: Since he is visible, he must be alive. This reveals that the reason the ghosts refuse to leave the bardo is because they cannot accept that they are dead, using the fact that they can still see, feel, hear, and dream as justification.

“Must stay Is not easy But I know honor Fix bayonets How to be brave Is not easy Remember Col. Ellis Killed by Rebs For bravely tearing down the Reb flag”

Willie invokes the lessons of courage his parents instilled in him while still alive. His commitment to honor is directly related to the morals surrounding the Civil War. The concept that one can become successful through sheer perseverance is a typically American notion, one that Willie holds on to into death. Willie will have to learn that sometimes, giving in is braver than fighting.

“We had sat every branch on every tree. Had read and re-read every stone. Had walked down (run down, crawled down, laid upon) every walk, path, and weedy trail, had waded every brook; possessed a comprehensive knowledge of the textures and tastes of the four distinct soil types here…I had heard Mr. Vollman’s story many thousands of times, and had, I fear, told him my own at least as many times.”

The bardo is characterized by perpetual boredom: Nothing new happens within its confines. The ghosts are doomed to exist without meaning, depressed and stagnant. They still long for connection, but their obsessions with their past lives make conversations circular and stale.

“O my dear I have a foreboding. And feel I must not linger. In this place of great sadness. He who preserves and Loves us scarcely present. And since we must endeavor always to walk beside Him, I feel I must not linger. But am Confin’d, in Mind & Bod, and unable, as if manacled, to leave at this time, dear Wife. I must seek & seek: What is it that keeps me in this abysmal Sad place?”

The soldier who arrives in and almost immediately departs the bardo illustrates that leaving the bardo is a choice. This man’s ghost senses that there is no God in the cemetery world, so he quickly exits in search of a more befitting place. His monologue is also a chance for Saunders to synthesize yet another in the novel’s endlessly inventive pastiches of genres, styles, and historically accurate writing conventions—this one based on letters written by Civil War soldiers.

“Why will it not work. What magic word made it work. Who is the keeper of that word. What did it profit Him to switch this one off. What a contraption it is. How did it ever run. What spark ran it. Grand little machine. Set up just so. Receiving the spark, it jumped to life. What put out that spark? What a sin it would be. Who would dare. Ruin such a marvel. Hence is murder anathema. God forbid I should ever commit such a grievous—”

As Lincoln calls out to God, questioning the purpose of taking Willie away, he suddenly connects his grief to that of other parents, whose children are losing their lives in the war. This moment shows Lincoln’s moral quandary, demonstrates his introspection, and positions him as doubting whether the evil of slavery justifies the evil of war—a moral debate that his long night in the bardo will help him resolve.

“His headstrong nature, a virtue in that previous place, imperils him here, where the natural law, harsh and arbitrary, brooks no rebellion, and must be scrupulously obeyed.”

Roger identifies a major problem with Willie’s presence in the bardo. As a child, Willie has only ever navigated life with the guidance of his parents. Without that guidance, he will fall victim to the so far unnamed dangers of the afterlife, which has strict but confusing rules. Allowed to run wild in life, he will not be able to rein himself in.

“What would be the point? For any of us here, it is too late for any alteration of course. All is done. We are shades, immaterial, and since that judgment pertains to what we did (or did not do) in that previous (material) realm, correction is now forever beyond our means. Our work there is finished; we only await payment.”

The Reverend Everly Thomas reveals his purpose in the bardo: to avoid judgment and convince others to do the same, worried that he’ll be sent to the terrifying hell he saw when he first died. Because he knows what awaits the bardo’s spirits, the Reverend is unique in the cemetery world. That a man who spent his life preaching Christianity is in death encouraging people to avoid judgment is darkly funny.

“Oh, the pathos of it!—haggard, drawn into fixed lines of unutterable sadness, with a look of loneliness, as of a soul whose depth of sorrow and bitterness no human sympathy could ever reach. The impression I carried away was that I had seen, not so much the President of the United States, as the saddest man in the world.”

Characterizations of Lincoln within the novel range from adoration to hostility. Here, a sympathetic observer notes the depths of President Lincoln’s sorrow: The death of his son and the burden of a nation at war are etched onto Lincoln’s face. This humanizes President Lincoln and reminds the reader of the real person behind the mythic historical figure.

“A certain modicum of humanity, yes, for only a beast would endure what I had endured without objection; and not even a beast would conspire to put on the manners of its masters and hope thereby to be rewarded. But it was too late. It is too late. It shall ever be too late.”

The introduction of Elson Farwell and other Black spirits makes the novel’s subtext into text. The Civil War was fought to the determine the future of enslaved people, and Lincoln’s doubts about continuing it force him to weigh the moral need to end slavery with his moral repulsion to inflict suffering on other parents. Elson’s perspective is a sobering reminder of the lives lost physically and wasted away through the slave system—the war seeks to put an end to even greater suffering to come. Elson’s plight in the bardo—his burning desire to avenge himself against his enslaver, who let him die alone and in wretchedness—makes his inability to let go of the past a righteous virtue rather than a weakness. Not all past grievances can be forgiven.

“Line up the corpses; walk from end to end; look upon each father, husband, brother, son; total up the cost that way, and think (as our military men, quizzed upon this confidentially, all do) that this grim line of ruined futures is only the beginning of the tidal wave of young death that must soon befall us.”

Lincoln’s critics lambast him for the trauma of the war. He has chosen a side that positions him as an enemy for some of his own citizens. For supporters, he is emblem onto which to project personal despair.

“I am not stable and Mary not stable and the very buildings and monuments here are not stable and the greater city not stable and the wide world not stable. All alter, are altering, in every instant.”

Saunders uses Lincoln’s inner thoughts to highlight an important theme of the novel. Nothing in the living world is permanent—nor should it be. Our finite time is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, so it’s important to be grateful for the mundane details that make life livable and lovable.

“What a pleasure. What a pleasure it was, being in there. Together. United in common purpose. In there together, yet also within one another, thereby receiving glimpses of one another’s minds, and glimpses, also, of Mr. Lincoln’s mind. How good it felt, doing this together!”

Willie’s impending tragedy brings the spirits of the bardo together in a new way. Though they keep one another company, missing from their in-between existence are the relationships built on empathy. United by their concern for the boy, the ghosts rediscover their human selves.

“As I had many times preached, our Lord is a fearsome Lord, and mysterious, and will not be predicted, but judges as He sees fit, and we are but as lambs to Him, whom He regards with neither affection nor malice; some go to the slaughter, while others are released to the meadow, by His whim, according to a standard we are too lowly to discern. It is only for us to accept; accept His judgment, and our punishment. But, as applied to me, this teaching did not satisfy. And oh, I was sick, sick at heart.”

The ghosts in the bardo tell themselves that they are only there because they are ill—that their graves are just sick beds where they are waiting for a cure. Only the Reverend knows the truth about their situation, but he refuses to tell it to the others or allow it to guide his behavior—his poor ministering offers a critique of the hypocrisies of organized religion.

“Father said it, he said. Said I am dead. Why would he say that, if it weren’t true? I just now heard him, that is, remembering having said it.”

By merging his mind into that of his father, Willie sees his death through his father’s eyes. The truth of what Lincoln experienced frees the boy, who trusts his father implicitly. By letting his son go, and by realizing that Willie does not belong to him, Lincoln saves his son from an eternity of torment. In turn, Willie saves the other trapped souls in the bardo.

“He was hopping with joy now, like a toddler too full of water. Look, join me, he said. Everyone! Why stay? There’s nothing to it. We’re done. Don’t you see?”

Adults in the bardo have too much memory of their past lives to accept that they are dead without external prompting. But Willie, a child, only remembers day-to-day pleasures. There is nothing to hold him to some prescribed future. While the other spirits accept their deaths perhaps dejectedly, Willie is thrilled to be free.

“Whatever that former fellow (willie) had, must now be given back (is given back gladly) as it never was mine (never his) and therefore is not being taken away, not at all! As I (who was of willie but is no longer (merely) of willie) return to such beauty.”

Willie adapts to reality quickly, adopting the ideals at the core of the Buddhist notions of life and death. In death, the Buddhist soul transcends the material world to return to a universe that regenerates without caring what that physical life endured. In Buddhist philosophy, each human life is unimportant on its own—to think otherwise is to subscribe to a false sense of ownership.

“He was leaving here broken, awed, humbled, diminished…Ready to believe anything of this world…Made less rigidly himself through this loss…Therefore quite powerful…Reduced, ruined, remade.”

In another example of Saunders incorporating Buddhist philosophy into his novel, Abraham Lincoln’s epiphany is to see the universality of suffering. Only through suffering can a person see the world and themselves in it with a renewed sense of self-love and awe. Filled with newfound understanding, Lincoln commits to the war anew.

“Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kinds watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself. Well, the rabble could. The rabble would. He would lead the rabble in managing. The thing would be won.”

In becoming renewed through his experience with suffering, Abraham Lincoln knows his must win the war to end the practice of enslaving other human beings. He decides to put himself at the head of the rabble—the ideal melting pot America who once rebelled against injustice and oppression to create a new country and can do so again.

“Though it seems killing must go hard against the will of God. Where might God stand on this. He has shown us. He could stop it. But has not. We must see God not as a Him (some linear rewarding fellow) but an IT, a great beast beyond our understanding, who wants something from us, and we must give it…”

Lincoln’s resolution to win the Civil War no matter the human cost is a direct byproduct of a new spiritual awakening. In this major turning point, Lincoln knows that he must leave a piece of him forever behind to move onto the next chapter of history.