In what ways does Hardy make “The Superstitious Man’s Story” like a true ghost story and not like a fantasy?

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The Superstitious Man’s Story

In what ways does Hardy make “The Superstitious Man’s Story” like a true ghost story and not like a fantasy?

Many factors in Thomas Hardy’s ‘The superstitious man’s story’ contribute to its realism and potency as a ghost story. Hardy, having been brought up in similar surroundings to the story, has an automatic knowledge and understanding of village life and everyday events. These are a large focus in this particular tale, used to make it more believable and less clichéd. When reading this story it is easy to imagine the characters and the setting as they have been created to represent the average person’s life.

Purposely, Thomas Hardy has fabricated this environment for his characters. Although Hardy wants to interest his readers, introducing simplicity to the setting is a vital element in creating this successful story. To make a story realistic as in ‘The Superstitious Man’s Story’ readers have to be able to imagine the setting. At the time this folk tale was written, the village Hardy describes is one that many people reading the story would be able to imagine and to which they could relate. Within the village, we see that there are many generations of the family living there as the narrator introduces Nancy as “Jim Weedle’s daughter”. This adds to the realism in the story as we are given a slight history of the village and the people living within it. The people in the village all know each other very well and we see how close-knit the community is. We see this during Mrs Privett’s conversation with Nancy when she tells her – “you do look sleepy today”. Although this is not a rude comment, it is not very polite, which implies that the two women must know each other well enough to be honest. It is understandable that in this small village there is not much for its habitants to do in the evenings. This is why it is believable that Nancy and her friends would spend an evening outside the church, a focal point in the village.

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Hardy has cleverly made this story believable by making it possible that the events in the story can be interpreted as coincidences. For example, when the sexton notices that the church bell went “very heavy all of a sudden”; this can be interpreted from two different viewpoints. The first would be along the lines of superstition, and tells us that someone in the village is due to die soon. The second insinuates that the bell merely needs to be oiled. There is nothing very special about the plot of this story. It revolves around the people of the village going ...

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