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The story My Country is a Ghost by Eugenia Triantafyllou tells the story of Niovi, who immigrated from Greece to another country. The peculiarity of the story is that most of the people in it have ghosts. The main character was forced to leave the ghost of her mother in her home country before moving, which made her feel disconnected from her native culture in a new place. First-generation immigrants lose their ties to their native culture and cannot build connections to a new one, while second-generation immigrants are part of both cultures. The ghosts in the story symbolize the cultural identity of the migrants in the new country.
The reader can clearly understand what the ghosts of people in the story symbolize from the first paragraphs. The ghost is used as a symbol of a cultural identity that is not shared by first-generation immigrants in the new country. Describing the departure of Niovi, the author emphasizes that “foreign ghosts were considered unnecessary” (Triantafyllou). The character had to give up the ghost of his mother in order to have a chance to go to another country. Thus, Niovi needed to reject their cultural and national identity in order to have a chance to assimilate into the new country. This fact sounds logical since each state has its own culture, which is made up of the customs and habits of its inhabitants. Immigrants, in turn, bring pieces of their cultures that are different from the local ones, which can become a threat to national identity. Extremely many new elements can threaten the integrity of the national identity of countries and their citizens, so they are undesirable. Niovi had to leave cultural ties to their country and heritage in order to embrace new ones.
The ghost symbol also shows how quickly immigrants assimilate into a new place. Niovi noted that “without her mother’s ghost, she would start to forget soon” (Triantafyllou). The character also emphasizes that ghostless immigrants form a group that allows them to retain the memory of their country. Thus, the author argues that without a constant connection with their culture, people quickly forget about it and perceive a new identity. Niovi was forced to give up her memories of her country, as there was nothing familiar to her in the new environment. Thus, the ghost as a symbol of cultural identity shows that immigrants need elements of their native culture in order to remain in it. Having no connection with their native country, memories quickly disappear, being replaced by elements of the culture of the new country, which leads to assimilation.
The author describes that there are collective ghosts that symbolize the national memory of the country. Niovi strolling through an unfamiliar city, notes that “there were the untethered ghosts” (Triantafyllou). Such ghosts depict features common to members of one culture, which equally belong to all of them. Niovi, on the other hand, has no idea who the general whose ghost she saw is, as she is not part of the culture of the new country. The ghost, in turn, is not part of her cultural identity, so she has no connection with him. Thus, the collective ghosts symbolize in the story large parts of the history of the country, which constitute its culture and are shared by all its inhabitants.
The author concludes that for first-generation immigrants, the only way to keep in touch with their culture is to be with other representatives of it. Niovi notes that “their ghosts were too different and living people were harder to be around” (Triantafyllou). It is difficult for her to interact with a foreign culture, while second-generation immigrants such as Remi experience greater integrity as they have a connection with both their native and local cultures. Thus, first-generation immigrants need to surround themselves with people from their own culture since they have no other connections with it. Ghosts in the story symbolize the cultural identity that, when moving to another country, immigrants are forced to leave in order to embrace the culture of another country.
Work Cited
Triantafyllou, Eugenia. “My Country Is a Ghost.” Uncanny Magazine, 2020.
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