Death

The theme and artifact of death is very prominent throughout many of the stories that we have read this year. Poverty and many bad living conditions probably prompted many authors to include death to write about, and bring attention to the ominous conditions in real life as well. In the very intriguing short story "The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship", death is the prominent artifact and theme. From the start there is a very ominous tone and it just seems destined for chaos and peril. The young boy goes back to his mother after he sees the strange ship, but when he tells her what he saw she does not believe him. from this point on the story becomes very dark. as the boy is on the way home his mother sits in the new chair she bough; she then suddenly has a heart attack before he can say anything and apparently four others in the village had died in the exact same chair. 

    The idea of death is ever-present in this story and it highlights the use of death in Caribbean literature. While the young boy is at the docks he spots a ghost ship which is a big symbol of death itself. The ship foreshadows things to come in the story as it sets a dark tone. The ship is a ghost ship and being a ghost ship, it belongs or is inhabited by ghosts which are dead. His mother then passes away on the same chair where four others pass away after, thinking of her late husband and hearing the main character tell her he will make her see the ghost ship. It is like a disease almost that is spreading to everyone he tells about the ship. It leaves him alone and isolated, and with a feeling that he must get the villagers to listen to him so he can have some sort of peace of mind. He says, "Now they’re going to see who I am, he said to himself in his strong new man’s voice, many years after he had first seen the huge ocean liner without lights and without any sound which passed by the village" (Garcia Marquez). Many years later the people finally see the ship but only once he has lost so much. The idea of death really links the theme of loneliness as well because when you lose someone you can feel alone. This dark story though takes place in a Caribbean Sea faring town and highlights the wealth disparity in the village. This highlights how dark many of the stories are, and how many writers brought light to the harsh living conditions and realities in the Caribbean. After all it is said that, "Death appears as a very important topos in the literature of the Caribbean, in some cases representing the need to break away from a painful past, the hope for new beginnings, and the dream of conceiving non-linear origins".