Chapter 3

The plot:

This chapter is very striking because there are some very interesting situations. The beginning of this chapter is set in the kitchen, here the family are having breakfast and speaking about  the first apparition of the ghost. We know that the  apparition didn’t cause any fear and for this reason the ghost is very angry and humiliated because the twins had thrown pillows at him.

For his second appearance, Mrs Otis makes  fun of him when she offers a remedy against indigestion.

For the rest of the week the ghost didn’t appear but the blood stain has changed colour several times and even became emerald-green which made Virginia cry. In the meantime the ghost selected the day – Friday 17th of August-  for his second  apparition, and chose the best clothes in his wardrobe. To teach the twins a lesson, the ghost wants to scare them a last time going to their room at night but they trap him they made a fake ghost and, in the end, it was the real ghost to be scared by them! However the ghost realizes his error when he sees the message in the library. 

Comments:

In chapter 3 the situation is inverted because it's the family who frightened the ghost and he's depressed, so it's original by the author to change typical horror story. The Otis family embody the typical mentality of the  American society that is based only on reason and rationality and usually don’t’ believe in the traditions of the mysterious phenomena.

In this chapter we can also see how  the author describes the situations comically. The situations overturn, in fact  in a  point of the chapter the ghost is frightened by the twins and not the Otis family are frightened by hi.  The behaviour of the twins is funny because they are young and they are ridiculising the, normally, terrified ghost. We can compare this event to the modern American film “Scary Movie”. A film in which the plot is the same as in our book. Also in this case the situations overturn: this time there isn’t a ghost but  there is a man that wears a strange mask (maybe the mask of death). 

But in our opinion, it's a kid story. Moreover, the ghost has some characteristics of human beings. Indeed, he can be sick and depressed, that's why we can say that this short story is really special.

Quotations:

“In the meantime the ghost selected the day – Friday 17th of August-  for his second  apparition, and chose the best clothes in his wardrobe”.This sentence underlines the principal issue, to be more precise, the humour side. In fact the author, by writing this scene,  makes the ghost very funny,  when he chooses the clothes and the day in which he has to frighten the family.   

By  Valerio,  Mattia, Cindy, Sarah