47 pages • 1 hour read
Amos TutuolaMy Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Meaning of ‘Bad’ and ‘Good’”
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses domestic violence, abuse, incarceration, and enslavement.
The narrator reflects on his life at the age of seven. He defines this age as when he understands “the meaning of ‘bad’ and ‘good’” because he recognizes hatred as “bad,” although he’s still unsure about “good.” (1). His father marries three women, the last of whom is the narrator’s mother. His father’s first two wives had only daughters, but his mother gave birth to two sons: the narrator and his brother. He claims the other wives hate him, his brother, and his mother, who works in the local market as a trader. The narrator calls this time in his life the “unknown year” because he is too young to remember what year it is. Several wars are happening, including slave wars, which put community members at risk of being kidnapped and sold into slavery.
One morning, his mother goes to the local market a couple of miles away from their village, and the other two wives leave the village with their daughters. According to the narrator, the wives are aware of incoming slave traders, and they leave before the threat arrives. The narrator and his brother eat their breakfast as gunshots are “reverberating into the room” (3). The boys run away to their grandmother’s house, stopping to collect some fruit, but sheep, goats, and other local animals get in their way. As the boys struggle to get away, the slave traders get closer, and the narrator begins to pray to God. His brother runs away, and the narrator attempts to find shelter by himself, hiding in a bush under a fruit tree that he calls a “Future Sign.” He hears his brother yell for help after being captured.
Chapter 2 Summary: “In the Bush of Ghosts”
The narrator continues to run away from the sound of gunshots, and he travels 16 miles to what he refers to as the “Bush of Ghosts,” a large wilderness that humans don't enter. Since he struggles to understand the difference between good and bad, the narrator doesn’t know that he isn’t allowed to enter the bush. He stops to eat the fruit he gathered with his brother before discovering a clean house where he tries to find refuge. He smells different traditional African foods, and he eventually discovers “three kinds of ghosts”—one gold, one copper, and one silver—looking at him from three different rooms and pointing their fingers at him (9). The narrator struggles to believe that the ghosts are real due to their old age. Each ghost motions for him to come, shining their light on him to persuade him to choose that ghost over the other two. The copper ghost’s light allows the narrator to smell African foods, the gold ghost’s light makes the boy’s body glow gold, and the silver ghost’s light shows the boy the bones inside his body. He recognizes that the ghosts want him to be their servant. The narrator decides to enter the copper ghost’s room, and the ghost gives him the food. The other two ghosts also enter the room and argue with each other. As the narrator tries to decide which ghost he will choose, he recognizes that the ghosts lack certain body parts, such as hands, eyes, ears, or feet. They are also all naked. They warn him not to choose one of the ghosts verbally but to choose with his heart. His heart tells him to choose the silver ghost, and the ghosts continue to fight until a younger ghost, covered in insects, enters the house.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Smelling-Ghost”
The new ghost has many bugs and animals crawling over him, including live scorpions worn as rings and poisonous snakes as necklaces. This ghost, who is known as the “smelling-ghost,” is full of human waste and blood from the animals he eats. The smelling-ghost is both hard to look at and be around due to his appearance and odor. When he enters the house, the other ghosts stop arguing. The smelling-ghost claims he will cut the narrator into three parts and give each of the other ghosts one of the parts. However, the original ghosts soon begin to argue again, and the smelling-ghost picks up the narrator and places him in his bag full of dead animals. Snakes enter and leave the bag as the narrator struggles to escape. The smelling-ghost questions aloud if he should eat all of the boy now or save half of his body for that night. The smelling-ghost walks for a while in the bush before meeting with another group of ghosts. Then, he takes the narrator to the “7th town of ghosts” (18).
Chapter 4 Summary: “My Life in the 7th Town of Ghosts”
Arriving at the smelling-ghost’s house, the narrator discovers that the ghost’s entire family smells as well. The narrator claims the babies in this town are born smelling like dead animals, and this smell keeps other ghosts and some animals away. They drink urine instead of water, and many bugs and snakes inhabit their home. The narrator sees an “Exhibition of Smells” in the town as well. At night, the smelling-ghost pushes the narrator into a room filled with flies, snakes, and other creatures. The boy lays down on a mat on the floor and thinks about how he is not at home with his mother and brother. When he wakes up the next morning, he discovers that 2,000 other smelling-ghosts came to congratulate the narrator’s captor. The smelling-ghost who took him is now known as his boss and changes the narrator into different creatures, such as a monkey, lion, horse, and cow. The narrator spends the day tied up underneath the hot sun as these different animals.
Later that night, the narrator’s boss changes him back to his natural form to eat, but then he makes him a camel and a horse to help the smelling-ghosts family with their chores. The narrator reveals that his boss is the king of the 7th town of ghosts, which only belongs to the smelling-ghosts. The narrator steals some of the “juju” that the smelling-ghost used to change the boy into different forms. After the narrator’s captor places him back in the bag to take him to another town, the narrator quickly escapes. The smelling-ghost runs after him, and the narrator uses the juju to help him escape. He changes himself into a cow with horns, but he realizes that he does not have enough juju to turn back into a human. As the narrator runs away from the smelling-ghost, a hungry lion chases him as well until the narrator finds a herd of cows to join.
Chapter 5 Summary: “My Life With Cows”
The other cows treat the narrator poorly because they believe him to be a wild cow. The men who care for the cows lock them in a yard at night and take them to a “wide pasture” every morning. The narrator does not eat the grass like the other cows because he is not a real cow. He tries to show the men he is human by attempting to eat their yams instead of grass, but the men beat him for not acting like the other cows. The men attempt to sell the narrator to butchers for two days, but the butchers will not buy him because they fear he could die at any moment. An old woman buys the narrator, intending to sacrifice him “for the god of her town” to bring back the eyesight of her daughter, who is blind (32). The old woman ties the narrator to a pillar outside her house and brings him cooked yams to eat. The woman leaves the narrator outside all night unprotected and without any heat. Huge flies bother him all night, and he comments that the size of the flies can only be found in the “Bush of Ghosts.”
Chapter 6 Summary: “A Cola Saved Me”
At noon the next day, the townspeople circle around the narrator to begin the sacrificial ritual. They dance around him, but before the ritual can be completed, the old woman has to return home to retrieve the “COLA,” a necessary ingredient for the sacrifice that she forgot. Some of the men make jokes about the narrator as a cow, letting go of him in their laughter. He runs away from the group of people into the bush and falls into a pond. When he sees his reflection in the water, he turns back into a human.
Since it has been three months since he slept, the narrator lays down inside a hole in a fallen tree trunk. However, during his sleep, a “homeless ghost” attempts to get inside of the tree trunk as well. Since the narrator is already inside, the ghost picks up the tree with the boy inside to take with him on his travels. The boy wakes up and cries about being kidnapped once again, and he realizes a snake is stuck inside the tree trunk with him. The homeless ghost and other nearby ghosts believe that the boy’s cries are music. The homeless ghost begins to dance and brings this “music” to other ghost towns. The ghost places a cork inside the hole’s opening to keep the boy from escaping. If the boy stops crying, the ghost places him next to a fire until the heat causes him to cry louder.
Chapter 7 Summary: “At a Ghost Mother’s Birthday Function”
The homeless-ghost gains popularity among the different ghost communities, and he is asked to bring the boy to a birthday party. After crying for many hours, the boy tires and quits crying, which causes the homeless-ghost to angrily “split the wood into two with an axe” (39). The snake escapes from the tree trunk, which scares the ghosts. The ghosts run away, and the narrator breaks free from the inside of the wood, hiding in a “far bush.”
After his escape, he discovers another ghost town filled with “burglar-ghosts,” who look like “earthly” people. When the boy asks one of the burglar-ghosts if he is human, the ghost claims to be both human and nonhuman, confusing the narrator. The ghost reveals that his community can change their form to that of a human baby, so they take the place of unborn babies inside of mothers’ wombs. After being born, they age dramatically over two to three months and then pretend to die. However, before they die, the mothers spend all their money and resources on the babies and practice sacrificial rituals to the gods for the babies’ benefits. After ghosts pretend to die, they use their “invisible power” to store all the money, resources, and sacrifices in “a secret place” for safekeeping until they can return to their own towns (41).
The narrator lives with this burglar-ghost and learns some of the ghosts’ language. He also forgets to find his way back to his own hometown. During this time, the burglar-ghost leaves for 10 months to pretend to be a baby, and, when he returns, the narrator sees items and animals from his hometown. He eats the animals with the ghosts, and he tells the burglar-ghost he wants to marry a “young ghostess” in town. The town plans the wedding for their dedicated day for marriages.
Chapter 8 Summary: “My First Wedding Day in the Bush of Ghosts”
During the wedding, the reverend ghost, whom the narrator refers to as Reverend Devil, informs the boy that he will have to be baptized in their church because he is an earthly person. The narrator attempts to escape the baptism, which includes fire and hot water, but the ghosts refuse to let him leave. The narrator undergoes the baptism, and he informs them of his experiences in the “bush of ghosts.” He marries the young ghostess, who is the daughter of a famous ghost in town, and the town celebrates the wedding. The narrator sees an enslaved ape at the celebration. The narrator gets intoxicated and kills a young ghost. The town summons the narrator to court, where he is threatened with fifty years of imprisonment, but a lawyer from a neighboring town helps the narrator escape punishment. The narrator decides to leave the town to go back home, but his wife’s father will not allow her to leave, so the narrator leaves without her.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
In the first six chapters of the novel, the narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the text, illustrates the dichotomy between the ghostly and earthly worlds. Early on, the narrator’s depictions of his home life introduce concrete concepts of family and interpersonal relationships. Tutuola illustrates traditional family structures in Yoruba culture, such as men having multiple wives and women being in charge of trade and markets. The earthly, or human, world grounds itself in structures and roles that are universal and create order in society. On the other hand, the bush of ghosts appears drastically different than the earthly world; its name alone connotes wildness through the image of the “bush.” The narrator’s comment that the bush is “so dreadful that no superior earthly person ever entered it” indicates that human society is elite or superior compared to the environment inside the bush (7). This contrast between the superior human world and the “dreadful,” inferior bush of ghosts aligns with the narrator’s claim that he only enters the bush because he does not yet understand the distinction between “good” and “bad.” Furthermore, the first ghosts the narrator discovers are “so old and weary that it is hard to believe that they were living creatures” (9). This description deepens the negative connotation with the bush, which is immediately as wearisome as it is dreadful. Both human and ghost environments will play a role in the coming-of-age process, aligning with the theme of The Bildungsroman Journey in Non-European Literature.
At the same time, the narrative creates mystery by not providing people’s names, including the narrator’s name, as well as referring to this period of the narrator’s life as the “unknown year” (1). By referring to this time as “unknown,” the novel transcends the temporal sphere; without a definitive year to refer to, Tutuola begins to blend the human and ghost worlds before the narrator even enters the bush of ghosts. The “unknown year” also separates the narrator from confinement to the earthly world: He already exists outside of time constraints and barriers. Because of this lack of temporal confinement, the narrator is open to experiences that transcend his own reality of the human world. As the narrator experiences, the ghosts have their own communities and their assigned roles within these communities, and each town within the bush serves its own purpose. While the social and political structure of the bush bears some similarities to human communities, the fantastical and magical elements within the bush create different opportunities and experiences for the narrator. In the bush of ghosts, the narrator is exposed to a variety of ways to live, whereas his previous experiences only came from his hometown, illustrating the theme of The Connection Between the Physical and the Spiritual.
The narrative structure aligns with the narrator’s experiences in certain towns within the bush and with specific ghosts he encounters. The beginning of the novel sets the tone for this narrative structure and allows the narrator to focus on specific incidents that occur during his 24 years in the bush of ghosts. Early on, the narrator starts to adapt to the way of life in the bush, and his decision to get married illustrates his desire to establish his life as he grows older. However, the narrator is met with reminders of his family and his life back home, which serve to ground the narrator in his existence as an earthly person and not as a ghost; these reminders occur periodically throughout the text. The first reminder of the narrator’s human home occurs when he lives with the burglar-ghost and discovers that the ghost pretended to be a sick baby in his hometown: “And when I saw that all that he brought and also my own and my brother’s properties, then I believed his story which he told me before he went away” (44). The meaning of this moment is twofold for the narrator. First, the clothing and material items remind him of his hometown and how much he desires to be back with his family. Second, it provides the narrator with proof of the magical properties of the bush. This dual meaning deepens the novel’s exploration of the connection between the physical and the spiritual by grounding the narrator’s desire for his human life in a magical encounter.
