Ghost World

The pages of Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World are filled with the suburban adventures of bored best friends Enid Closeslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer. Their dead-end town remains unnamed for the entire book, and becomes quite relatable for every kid that feels stuck in a town too small for them. Enid and Rebecca banter incessantly and their cynical personalities lead them to constantly critique popular culture. But as they grow out of their adolescence, tensions arise and the two drift apart. Clowe’s graphic novel is a stark representation of adolescent life and the sadness that can accompany growing up.

It is possible that Ghost World struck me most of all the novels we studied this semester in class. The unnamed town that our heroines live in is not unlike the one I spent my adolescence. Shopping malls and fast food restaurants were where my friends and I would spend the majority of our free time. Just like Enid, my boredom would lead me to seek cheap thrills (Enid forced Josh to take her to a pornographic store, I forced my friends to make Maltov Cocktails out of empty bottles to throw on our high school’s baseball diamond).

The ease in which I related to the characters (or imagined someone else relating to the characters—is there a word for this?) was interesting to me. While I found more similarities with Enid (a bit eccentric and fascinated with weird things), I could see many readers finding similarities with Rebecca. She assumes the role of a more typical teenage girl character—the type that reads teen magazines. At the end of the novel, she also ends up on a more normal trajectory, maturing into a potentially sensible woman. Enid, on the other hand fails to gain admission into college and leaves town to start a new life. The melancholy that this separation brings is poignant, especially because of the familiarity of the setting and characters.

The art complements this dreary and profoundly realistic story. The characters are average looking (erring on unattractive) and the scenes are covered with a blue haze. Clowe’s characters are as real as the issues they deal with, which in some ways make the story’s subject matter harder to take down. It is interesting that a novel like Batman, Watchmen, and even Jimmy Corrigan to some extent rely on lightness and jokes to discuss the serious underlying issues that drive the novels forward, but novels such as Ghost World, Night Fishers, or Shortcomings maintain a sort of realism about everyday (mostly relational) struggles that humans face.

One aspect of the book I found interesting was the reoccurring symbol of the words “Ghost World.” We see it tagged on signs and garage doors, and at one point, Enid even witnesses a graffiti artist that has left a fresh tag. “Come back here!” she yells. I haven’t yet decided what to make of this, but I suspect major themes of the book are reflected in such taggings.