The Night the Ghost Got In

“The Night the Ghost Got In” is a story that explores how imagination influences the perception of the unknown in humorous ways. The events and publication of the story itself both occur during periods of war, and while Thurber refrains from directly addressing it, the effects of war and its impact on social consciousness bleed through, nevertheless. A sense of paranoia is very present throughout the story, amplified by the unknown “threat” the characters believe they are facing.

One of the ways war impacts the social consciousness of the characters is through absurdism. Absurdism is a philosophical concept that refers to the conflict between humanity’s tendency to search for meaning and the inability to find hard evidence of such meaning. Absurdism became prevalent during the 20th century in the aftermath of World War I, when the horrors of the war left people to grapple with meaning in a world that they believed was meaningless. Thurber portrays this struggle to find meaning through the characters’ attempts to find the culprit of the noise and to find an identifiable source where there isn’t one. When the source cannot be identified and meaning cannot be made, the characters are left with what they do have: their imagination and feelings of paranoia.