Essay Questions

What makes the title “Old Habits” relevant? - “Old Habits”

The ghosts are reminiscent of the things that elated them ('old habits') before their demises: Jimmy longs for smoking cigars; Black Anchor pines for beets,and the narrator yearns for milk shakes. Jimmy wishes for frothy and “ jumping from the deck into the lake for the first time since the fall before.” Black anchor is sentimental over the “Toronto summers.” Additionally, the narrator explicates, “Jimmy and Black Anchor and I are sitting on those hard plastic seats that are bolted to food court tables. We’re playing “Things I Miss.” Kind of sitting, anyway. Sitting on surfaces is one of those habits that’s hard to break.” The ghosts are engrossed in the practices that they engaged in when they were still existent. The transformation of status from living to ghosts does not encumber their disposition to the “ old habits.” The fantasy indicates that ghosts too have partialities that delineate their ghost lives and predilections are transmitted from their earthly lives.

What can you deduce about the narrator’s sexuality before he died? - “Old Habits”

The narrator declares that he is nostalgic of “The warm milk smell of my husband’s breath after his morning coffee.” The acknowledgment means that the narrator was in a gay relationship; he wedded to another man.

Why are the bird’s cries significant for Beatrice? - “The Glass Bottle Trick”

The cries are a furtive religious intermediation that cautions Beatrice about the prospect of losing her life and that of her unborn child to Samuel ( who the snake represents.) The snake interrupts life when it embezzles the birds’ eggs before the eggs (which represent life) can hatch into chicks. Comparatively, Samuel has the propensity to murder his pregnant wives before the delivery of babies. The bird elicits a ripple effect which assists Beatrice to realize that Samuel bounds his wives’ spirits by way of the bottles.

How does Samuel embody “White supremacism?” - “The Glass Bottle Trick”

Hopkinson expounds, “But Beatrice knew he just didn’t want her to get too brown. When the sun touched her, it brought out the sepia and cinnamon in her blood, overpowered the milk and honey, and he could no longer pretend she was white. He loved her skin pale. “Look how you gleam in the moonlight,” he’d say to her when he made gentle, almost supplicating love to her at night in the four-poster bed.” Samuel’s preference for pale skin is extraordinary. He conceives that his wife’s skin is white to recompense his unconscious desire for a white skin. Samuel discourages Beatrice from basking in the sun because it would blacken her skin which would demystify his aberration regarding the wife’s whiteness.

What is the interrelationship between the two bottles and the corpses in the house? - “The Glass Bottle Trick”

Hopkinson illuminates, “Beatrice had broken the bottles that had confined the duppy wives, their bodies held in stasis because their spirits were trapped. She’d freed them. She’d let them into the house. Now there was nothing to cool their fury. The heat of it was warming the room up quickly.” The two bottles encompass the spirits of the corpses that are stretched out in the cold room. The smashing of the two bottles unshackles the corpses’ spirits. The deceased women’s fury alters the ambiance of the house. Clearly, Samuel shrouded his secret of keeping the house’s temperature low-slung at all times because he apprehended that temperateness would mess up the equilibrium of his wives’ bodies.