Post modernism and Ghost World:

Literature has many characteristics depending on what trend, style or type is focusing on, but conflicts are the element that can never be missed when talking about literature. As we already learned during this semester, Modernism deals with Inner Crisis as one of its most important conflicts, placing humanity between a rock and a hard place about life, beliefs, traditions, change, evolution, identity and the influence of external factors like industrialism, war, religion, among others, representing all that features in different works.

But, what about Postmodernism? What relation can be made between postmodernism and Ghost World? As you can see in the picture, post modernism makes the human being deal with reality: Enid and Rebbeca have to put up with their reality and face it, they have to deal with adulthood, responsibilities, studies, changes in lifestyle; Postmodernism refers that although change is not bad, it is a must to overcome it, and that is basically what we as readers see the girls doing. Furthermore, adolescent’s way of viewing problems as well as changes is more chaotic and frightening, Enid and Rebecca are perceiving that their world changes too fast that moments that can be utterly absurd for readers can be quite important for them, as for example the pair of pants on the street that has been there for God knows how much time or the Ghost World slogan in many different places of the city because all this moments give them a sense of continuity, peace and stability (not everything has changed). Contrary to that, when the author of those graffiti shows up, this “inner stability” disappears; even when Enid prepares a garage sell and she seems no care about it, when she is back she is glad of her “teddy bear” is still there, keeping her childhood memories.

After reading the graphic novels and doing a long research, common techniques of Postmodernism can be identified in Ghost World, as for example Irony, Playfulness and black humor: those characteristics are the essential part of Enid, who most of the time is the one who plays mean jokes, highlights bad qualities of men and people in general, etc. Referring to the graphic novel, its fragmentation attempts the reader complete the rest of the story before and after each sequence of events/chapter; it is only shown what the girls can see and live that form part of their reality.

The lack of narration in the novel makes that images and dialogues transform in the only vehicle to give meaning and context to the story, leaving to character’s development and reader interpretation, reading images and looking at words. This can be related to Reader-response Criticism that places the reader with an active role during the reading in order to give meaning to the missing parts of the story. 

Do you think you can identify with Enid and Rebecca' life? Did you have so many problems when facing adulthood?