VI: Spooks explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Illusion vs. Reality

  The dream reveals the narrator's ghostly nature, blurring the line between life and death, presence and absence.

• Love and Loss

  The narrator's longing for his beloved is thwarted by his own death, highlighting the pain of separation.

Characters to notice

• Dymer

  The narrator, appearing as a ghost in his own dream, unable to enter his beloved's house.

• Joy

  The beloved whose house is warm and lit, but inaccessible to the ghostly narrator.

Key passages

• “Last night I dreamed that I was come again Unto the house where my belovèd dwells After long years of wandering and pain.”

  The speaker dreams of returning to his beloved's home after many years of suffering.

  Opens the chapter with a dream sequence of return.

• “Yet I could not draw near nor enter in, And long I wondered if some secret sin Or old, unhappy anger held me fast; Till suddenly it came into my head That I was killed long since and lying dead⁠— Only a homeless wraith that way had passed.”

  He cannot approach the house and realizes he is a ghost, dead for a long time.

  Reveals the narrator's ghostly state and the reason for his exclusion.