A Ghost Story Flashcards
by Mark Twain — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: A Ghost Story
Where does the narrator take up lodgings at the beginning of the story?
A large room far up Broadway in a huge old building whose upper stories had been unoccupied for years — dusty, cobwebbed, and silent.
What is the first supernatural event the narrator experiences in bed?
The bedclothes begin sliding slowly toward the foot of the bed as if someone is pulling them, and an answering groan comes from the foot of the bed.
What clue does the narrator find in the ashes of the hearth?
A vast footprint beside his own — so enormous that his looks like an infant's by comparison — explaining the elephantine tread he heard.
What supernatural phenomena fill the building after the narrator returns to bed?
Dragging bodies, slamming doors, clanking chains, stealthy footsteps, muttered sentences, smothered screams, phosphorescent lights that turn to blood, and floating pallid faces.
What does the ghost turn out to be when it finally materializes?
The Cardiff Giant — a naked, muscular, majestic figure with a benignant countenance that immediately dispels the narrator's fear.
What comic disaster happens when the giant tries to sit down?
He shatters two chairs and ruins the bed because his petrified weight destroys every piece of furniture he sits on.
What is the ghost's reason for haunting the building?
He is the spirit of the Cardiff Giant and wants his body given a proper burial, so he haunts the museum across the street — and when that fails, he crosses over to haunt the narrator's building.
What is the devastating twist the narrator reveals to the ghost?
The ghost has been haunting a plaster cast of himself; the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany. He's been tormenting people over a fake copy of his own remains.
How does the narrator's attitude toward the ghost shift once it materializes?
He goes from paralyzed terror to friendly chattiness — scolding the giant for breaking furniture, offering him a pipe, and settling in for a cozy fireside conversation.
How is the Cardiff Giant characterized as a ghost?
As a pitiable, exhausted figure — lonely, footsore from chilblains, worn out from nights of fruitless haunting, and ultimately humiliated by his own mistake.
What does the ghost ask the narrator as his final request?
Not to let the story get out — he's mortified at having been fooled by a fraud, saying "Think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself."
What comic detail ends the story?
The narrator feels sorry the ghost has gone — and sorrier still that he carried off his red blanket and bathtub.
What is the central theme of "A Ghost Story"?
The absurdity of hoaxes and credulity — the ghost himself is duped by the very culture of fraud that created the Cardiff Giant in the first place.
How does Twain satirize American gullibility through the Cardiff Giant premise?
The real Cardiff Giant was a famous 1869 hoax, then a copy was made to profit further — Twain extends the farce by having even the ghost fooled by a copy of a fake.
What does the story suggest about the relationship between fear and knowledge?
The narrator's terror evaporates the instant he recognizes what the ghost is — ignorance creates dread, while understanding brings comfort and even friendship.
How does the first half of the story parody Gothic conventions?
Twain deploys every Gothic cliché — dark corridors, sliding bedclothes, clanking chains, blood drops, spectral faces — then deflates them all when the ghost turns out to be a confused, friendly petrified man.
What type of irony is at the heart of the story's twist?
Situational irony — the ghost, who should know his own body, has been haunting a plaster replica of himself, making him the ultimate victim of the hoax.
How does Twain use tonal shift as a comic device?
The story pivots abruptly from genuine Gothic horror to domestic comedy when the narrator starts scolding the giant for breaking chairs, creating a jarring, hilarious contrast.
What is the effect of the bracketed editorial note about the real Cardiff Giant?
It breaks the fictional frame to confirm the factual basis of the hoax, blurring the line between Twain's satire and real-world absurdity.
What does "torpid" mean when the narrator lies "torpid a century of dragging seconds"?
Numb and unable to move — paralyzed with fear as the bedclothes are pulled away.
What does "benignant" mean in describing the Cardiff Giant's countenance?
Kind and gentle in expression — the ghost's face is so harmless-looking that all the narrator's fear instantly vanishes.
What are "chilblains" and why does the ghost complain of them?
Painful swelling caused by cold exposure. The ghost caught them "clear up to the back of his head" from being buried under Newell's farm — a comic touch for a petrified stone figure.
What does the ghost mean when he says "the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost"?
The Cardiff Giant hoax fooled the public, then a duplicate fooled more people, and now even the ghost of the original has been deceived — the fraud has come full circle to victimize its own spirit.
What is significant about the narrator's line "This transcends everything that ever did occur"?
It captures the layered absurdity: a ghost haunting a fake copy of its own fake body is so preposterous it surpasses every other hoax and ghost story combined.