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Ghosts’ Stories: Addictive Behaviors And Complicated Grief In George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo, Jc Leishman

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

When experiencing the natural motions of the grieving process, some individuals encounter an inability to pass this process by a phenomenon known as complicated grief. To deal with the cyclical trauma this causes, the human mind seeks to engage in addictive behaviors (both substantive and behavioral) that work to artificially and momentarily circumvent grief. This process, as it appears in George Saunders' experimental novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, reveals a depth of commentary on human attachments and grieving processes through the lives and narratives of ghosts found in the bardo.