Lincoln in the Bardo Literary Elements

Historical Revisionist Fiction, Experimental Fiction

The novel takes place primarily in one night, shortly after Willie Lincoln's death on December 21st, 1850. The setting is a graveyard in Washington, DC, where Willie Lincoln is buried.

The novel is narrated by a variety of speakers, all of who, are indicated at the end of each section. The most prominent narrators are Roger Bevins III and Hans Vollman. All of the speakers use the first-person point of view.

The mood of the novel is very somber. Abraham Lincoln's grief at the loss of his son is made palpable, and much of the novel follows his mourning. Similarly, there is an obvious mood of despair that surrounds the death of a young boy like Willie Lincoln. At the same time, the tone is magical, fantastical and hopeful. That is to say, even though Willie Lincoln has died, there is a hope for his redemption beyond the Bardo, if only he can escape.

The central protagonist is Willie Lincoln, and the antagonist is the malevolent, albeit unnamed, forces which try to capture Willie in the Bardo forever.

Willie Lincoln must move beyond the Bardo because it is a dangerous place for children. He does not want to leave, however, because his father comes to visit him, thus giving Willie the idea that he can recover from his illness. After a short period of time in the Bardo, a network of tendrils begin to attack him, threatening to trap him in the Bardo forever.

Roger and Hans finally free Willie from the tendrils and carry him over to the Church where his father sits and prays. In the church, Willie steps inside of his father and comes to the realization that he is not ill, but rather dead. Upon this realization, he transcends beyond the Bardo with many other inhabitants of the Bardo going with him. Lincoln leaves the cemetery on horseback, and after a tender goodbye, both Roger and Hans also transcend from the Bardo.

At the beginning of the novel, the severity of Willie Lincoln's illness is described, and it is foreshadowed that he will die. Then, when he dies and enters the Bardo, it is foreshadowed that the Bardo is a dangerous place for young souls. The very nature of this danger is revealed when the tendrils begin to attack Willie.

It is harder to locate understatement than overstatement within the novel because the writing is incredibly expressive and dramatic. The most notable understatement, however, is when Roger Bevins transcends the Bardo. While the experience of transcendence is normally depicted as an incredibly bright flash of light and energy, in the case of Roger Bevins there is no description at all, only his final words: "Goodbye, goodbye good—".

The novel is rife with allusions to the American history of the time in which the novel is set, with particular reference to the Civil War between the Confederacy and the Union, as well as the contentious issue of slavery.

The novel is rife with vivid and detailed imagery. For example, the party that the Lincoln's host while Willie is ill is described in great detail, as "a veritable bazaar of scent, colognes, perfumes, fans, hairpieces, hats, grimacing faces, [and] mouths held open in sudden shrieks." Likewise, the violence of the Civil War, which took place concurrently to the setting of the novel, is graphically described as "many soldiers lying dead and wounded, in open fields, all across the land, weeds violating their torsos, eyeballs pecked out or dissolving, lips hideously retraced."

A central paradox underpins the characters stuck in the Bardo. While they must acknowledge that they are dead in order to move beyond the Bardo, a majority of them believe that they are only sick, and not dead, and can therefore not move beyond the Bardo. Finally, when Willie Lincoln reveals to everyone in the Bardo that they are dead, they are freed from this paradox.

Parallelism is seldom found in the novel. A notable exception, however, is when Roger and Hans come across a young girl, Traynor, who has become trapped in the Bardo. She lives a life of agony and constantly transmutes into different shapes. When they see her transmutation is described using parallelism: "the umbrella became the corn; the corn the hag; the hag the girl." Another example is found when Abraham Lincoln visits the grave of Willie. In an inner monologue he says, "it is secret. A bit of secret weakness, that shores me up; in shoring me up, it makes it more likely that I shall do my duty in other matters."

At many times in the novel, President Lincoln is presented as a stand-in for the entirety of the Union forces during the Confederate War. Likewise, while the scope of the cemetery is limited, it can be seen as a representation of the entire spirit world. Similarly, The White House, in which Lincoln resides, is a stand-in for the broader American government.

In a sense, the entire novel is a personification of the dead. While the dead are normally portrayed as inanimate, in this case they are active, mobile and capable of speech and emotions.