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Native American Stories
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Native American literature has originated from three sources: Indian, Afro-American folklore, and the folklore of white settlers. One of the most interesting topics to study in terms of this literature is a role of a supernatural being through the ghost stories written by S. E. Schlosser.
S. E. Schlosser calls his stories “True New Jersey Ghost Stories.” Reading two his works –“Devil on Washington Rock” and “Ghost of Pearl White” – the reader can ask oneself if Devil and Ghost Lady are literary figures or the writer created them with a purpose to get on the reader’s nerves or if those characters get any connections with the real life. The author does not intend to scare a reader by his supernatural heroes. The plot has nothing to do with death or missing people. Moreover, images of Devil and Ghost Lady are used by S. E. Schlosser to illuminate the more shadowy or repressed aspects of other characters of the stories. In addition, the litterateur creates the aforementioned heroes to build up a thin veil between reality and a dream. In one story, the narrator can not separate her dream from the reality when she first sees Devil at the party in her dream and when she sees him driving a motorcycle in her real life. In the second writing piece, a child sees the Ghost Lady entering his bedroom either in his dream or in reality. Both characters are created to make an atmosphere of tense, expectation, and suspense.
Unlike traditional monsters and vampires, S. E. Schlosser draws his supernatural characters with graceful sympathy: “Devil was an ordinary, blond and handsome man’ and a Ghost Lady was “pretty, gracious and dressed in gorgeous, fancy dresses” (Gordon 1997). Both characters look like ordinary people that make them even more horrifying to the narrator.
The analyzed stories are permeated by the atmosphere of nostalgia to the times when Native Americans’ stories were dedicated to educating persons, and to preserving of the American culture and history.
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