The ghosts have never seen such a display of affection to one of their own, and they immediately latch on to Willie for good luck or wisdom. Unexpectedly, Lincoln comes to the cemetery after hours by himself to cradle Willie’s body and mourn. It becomes clear that none of the ghosts can acknowledge that they are dead they refuse to countenance the fact of their decaying bodies or gravesites. Together with the ghost of Reverend Everly Thomas, Hans and Roger work to free Willie from the bardo-an afterlife state trapping ghosts who refuse or are too frightened to move on-and explain the cemetery’s rules for instance, the cemetery is unkind to children. He is taken under the wing of Hans and Roger, two friends who enable each other’s denial. The cemetery is full of ghosts that exist in physical forms that manifest their unresolved issues in life. Willie wakes up in his tomb after his funeral. The public perception of Lincoln serves as background noise for Lincoln’s inconsolable grief over the loss of Willie. When Willie dies, President Lincoln must endure public resentment for the war as well as prurient speculation about the circumstances of his son’s illness, which came to a crisis while the White House hosted a gala. Meanwhile, President Abraham Lincoln’s beloved 11-year-old son Willie dies of typhoid fever in the White House. In 1862, the American Civil War has just begun. The novel is characteristic of Saunders’s experimental and humorous writing style, which often uses elements of science fiction or fantasy. Lincoln in the Bardo is structured using postmodern techniques: Saunders interweaves fictionalized and real historical records, realist narration, and dramatic scenes.

Greatly informed by Saunders’s experiences with Buddhism, the novel is a treatise on positive nihilism and the value of community and individualism.

The stories of these dead-and, by implication, the newly created dead of the ongoing Civil War-force readers to consider philosophical questions of existence, purpose, and the afterlife.

Each ghostly voice speaks in a pastiche of writing style from the time in which they lived. As Lincoln grieves at the site of his son’s grave, readers encounter the ghosts of others buried in the cemetery alongside the boy their lives and the rules by which they are allowed to haunt the living form the core of the novel’s plot. However, Saunders infuses his novel with supernatural elements, magical realism, black comedy, and psychological narrative to explore what it means to be human. Set in 1862, Lincoln in the Bardo is ostensibly historical fiction centered on one night in the life of 16th US President Abraham Lincoln, just after the tragic death of his young son.

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