Lincoln in the Bardo

Willie Lincoln, age 11, died of typhoid in 1862, while his father was president and in the midst of waging the Civil War.  His parents were devastated.  His father is known to have become more religious after Willie's death, and to have wondered why God should have wanted such a brutal war to determine the fate of the Union.

In his best-selling novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders presents a picture of life in America in 1862, and of the Lincoln presidency.  He does so by imagining the first days following Willie's death, a period of time when Willie's spirit lingered in the cemetery, uncertain that he was dead or of what lay ahead, and awaiting instructions from his father.

The novel is an odd pastiche of excerpts from contemporary writers (real and fictional), and a study of the thoughts and actions of a wide selection of cemetery "residents" -- a cross section of all American socio-economic, sexual, and racial groupings -- a study that gives insight into how the common man viewed life and war in the mid-nineteenth century.

What I have said leaves the impression that the novel is somewhat conventional.  It isn't.  The actual plot is extremely simple -- Willie is interred in his tomb, and his spirit lingers in the cemetery. President Lincoln comes to visit his child's body a couple of times, not realizing that Willie was beside him but unable to communicate with him.  By "stepping into" his father, Willie eventually becomes able to learn from his father's thoughts that he was indeed dead, not just waiting for his father to take him home.  Thus enlightened, Willie allows himself to "leave" the earth, presumably to face final judgment.

The first half of the book sets up the "rules" governing those in the "bardo" -- that word is never used except in the title -- and introduces us to a large number of the cemetery residents, each of whom has an interesting (often tragic) life to relate.  This in-between or "limbo" existence reminded me immediately of Neal Schusterman's Skinjacker Trilogy, a YA fantasy that I feel was actually more ingenious, and certainly more entertaining, than this first half of Lincoln in the Bardo.

As in the Skinjacker books, most people when they die do not hang around their grave site.  In the YA series, only those who died as children or teenagers and ran into certain problems "getting to where they were going" ended up in "Everlost."  In Lincoln in the Bardo, those stuck in the cemetery are those strongly attached to their lives on earth -- either because of their earthly happiness or because of unresolved problems or hatreds -- and who manage to convince themselves that they are merely "sick"  -- sleeping in "sick-boxes," and awaiting their return to wellness and their normal lives.  Once a resident realizes that he is actually dead, he generally assents to passing on to whatever lies ahead.

The second half of the book is much deeper and certainly darker than the Schusterman trilogy.  One of the three main characters who speaks to us from the cemetery is the Reverend Everly Thomas, perhaps the wisest and most likeable of the major characters.   He is the only resident of the cemetery who has already appeared before the throne of God, been judged, and found fit for damnation.  He manages to escape, unopposed, and ended back at his place of buriel.

The reverend is tormented by his inability to understand what it was about his life that barred him from Heaven.

As I had many times preached, our Lord is a fearsome Lord, and mysterious, and will not be predicted, but judges as He sees fit, and we are but as lambs to Him, whom He regards with neither affection nor malice; some go to the slaughter, while others are released to the meadow, by His whim, according to a standard we are too lowly to discern. ... But, as applied to me, this teaching did not satisfy.

He believes that one's salvation is earned or lost by one's actions during life on earth, that the judgment is final, and that his punishment has been only delayed for reasons he doesn't understand.

I did not kill, steal, abuse, deceive, was not an adulterer, always tried to be charitable and just, believed in God and endeavored, at all times, to the best of my ability, to live according to His will.

And yet he was damned.

Reverend Everly does not, of course, believe in any form of purgatory, where a certain amount of "second chance" might be afforded.  And he has never heard of the Tibetan Buddhist "bardo," the transitional state between incarnations, which inspired the title of the book.

For the prepared and appropriately trained individuals the bardo offers a state of great opportunity for liberation, since transcendental insight may arise with the direct experience of reality, while for others it can become a place of danger as the karmically created hallucinations can impel one into a less than desirable rebirth.

--Wikipedia

Most of the cemetery residents hold "free will" in low esteem.  They are convinced that the wrongs they committed during life were predestined by the weaknesses of character they received at birth.  They willingly go on to judgment as soon as they accept the fact that they have died. 
We hope for the best for our good, but justifiably terrified, minister.  At one point, he wonders to himself in passing:

Perhaps, I thought, this is faith: to believe our God ever receptive to the smallest good intention."

This thought provides us, the readers, some wiggle room, some grounds for hope that Rev. Everly's subsequent actions, inspired by his concern for Willie, might merit a re-opening of the case against him. 

Willie subsequently learns of his death, escapes the cemetery, and goes off to face his Maker.

Abraham Lincoln was affected by his night in the cemetery, and by his unknowing confrontation with the shades of its inhabitants.  History shows that the war began going better for the Union after Willie's death.  The president agonizingly but firmly sent thousands of young men to their deaths, in the hope that it was the will of Providence that the Union be saved, whatever the human cost. 

Maybe he was right. 

Lincoln in the Bardo is a quick read, if you're in a hurry, but contains a lot of meat to digest.  Worth taking some time to read slowly and think about.