Lincoln in the Bardo

Roger Bevins, another of the three main narrators, is a kind helper to Willie. Roger died by suicide after his boyfriend was unwilling to continue their illicit homosexual relationship; in the bardo, he manifests as a man with too many faces, each looking worriedly around lest he and his lover be discovered. Confused by the details of his life, Roger spends his time in purgatory talking with Hans and avoiding the reality of his suicide. Roger’s catharsis as he finally gives in to the matterlightblooming phenomenon is one of acceptance and the joys of being present: Suddenly, he becomes aware of all the beautifully mundane things in the world he was too busy living to pay attention to while alive.

The Reverend Everly Thomas, the last of the three main narrators, is a kind and decent man who is the only bardo resident aware that he is dead; what keeps him trapped is his cowardice. While alive, he preached the standard Christian belief that after death, each soul is judged and then sent to either heaven or hell. But when facing his own judgment, the Reverend panicked and ran away to the bardo in terror before finding out the fate of his soul. Now, he does his best to convince people to postpone their departure from the bardo. Despite his flaws, the Reverend is a good man who helps Willie and provides a poignant dark humor to the novel.

Willie Lincoln, a real historical figure, was President Abraham Lincoln’s youngest son, who died from typhoid fever when he was 11 years old. In the novel, Willie, a newcomer ghost to the bardo, functions as an audience surrogate—as he learns the rules of this afterlife world, readers come to understand them alongside him. Willie’s innocence unites the bardo’s residents as they rally to reconnect him with his father; it also makes him prey for the scary vines that trap the bardo’s young—revealed to be the leftover spirits of the completely irredeemable. In a way, Willie comes of age in the bardo, as his dip into his father’s thoughts reveals to him that he is dead—a realization he imparts to the other ghosts, which in turn sets him and them free.

The novel takes place over one night in the life of Abraham Lincoln—Saunders imagines the president returning to the grave of his beloved son Willie to grieve alone after the public spectacle of the funeral. Lincoln looms over the narrative just as he looms in our historical consciousness: The honorable, legendary, iconic harbinger of change, whose personal turmoil over Willie’s death and philosophical wrestling with the morality and necessity of waging the civil war lie at the heart of novel. The bardo is the backdrop for his reckoning with the nature of sorrow and his transformative realization that the suffering the war inflicts pales in comparison to the ongoing suffering that slavery would inflict on its victims and on the country.