50 pages • 1 hour read
Isabella HammadEnter Ghost
Isabella HammadFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Ghost
In Enter Ghost, the characters are haunted by the ghosts of themselves, the past, and the Israeli occupation. The titular ghost refers to the ghost of Prince Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. He appears in the play to tell Prince Hamlet that Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, murdered him and has since married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Enter Ghost is a stage direction in the script of the play. The character who plays the ghost in the production is Majed. The Israeli authorities later summon him for interrogation about the funding of the play. This is the first clue that suggests one of the ghosts that haunt the play is the Israeli occupation itself. It appears at inopportune times and disrupts the characters’ lives, much like the Ghost in Hamlet. For instance, after Sonia watches Israeli authorities detain and interrogate Wael at the checkpoint, Haneen comments, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost” (157). The author clarifies this association by the ending of the novel when the Israeli soldiers storm the stage at the moment of the stage direction, “Enter Ghost.”
Relatedly, the character Dawud/Yunes acts as a ghost haunting both the university and the theater; the novel later reveals him as a spy for Israel. Yunes first appears to be living as a ghost in Haneen’s university building. He then haunts the theater as Dawud. In a spooky moment, Sonia feels someone behind her during a power blackout. She assumes it is Ibrahim but later concludes it was Dawud.
Sonia herself is also something of a ghost. When she visits her aunt, she feels “as though [she] were an emissary, a medium for a ghost, not understanding what [she] channeled” (120). Later, when she tells her father about visiting her grandparents’ former home, he laughs and says, “You’re like a ghost to [the current Jewish Israeli occupant]” (211). She is a vassal and haunting reminder of the past.
Dreams
Dreams are a symbol of hope in Enter Ghost. Dreams act as a territory that suspends the rules and strictures and allows individuals to imagine the possibility of new political futures and engagements. The character of Mariam Mansour is the most explicit about the importance of dreams. She tells Sonia that she broke it off with her ex-husband because “[h]e had no dream [about the future]” (136). She exhorts Sonia, “You have to fake [optimism about the future]” (136). The author repeats this symbol of dreams throughout the text, where characters often tell each other about their dreams, beginning with Haneen and Sonia discussing their night’s dreams over breakfast in Chapter 2. Later, Sonia dreams of her mother. Amin tells Sonia he dreamt about her. Ibrahim even describes his strange relationship with Sonia as “a fucking weird dream” (267). After the wrap party, Sonia slept but didn’t dream and woke up nauseated. The play was what had kept her dream going. This, in part, explains her motivation to stage a final performance of Hamlet at the checkpoint; she and the others hope to keep the dream alive. In this way, dreams connect to the theme of The Relationship Between Theater and Politics.
Languages
Languages are a motif that relates to the theme of Palestinian Identity and Resistance. Often, language creates distance between people even though, ultimately, it is also language that brings them together.
There are a variety of languages at play in the novel. In Israel, the primary language is Hebrew, a language that Sonia does not speak, but Haneen does. Within the Nasir family living in Haifa, they speak dialectical Palestinian Arabic, which Sonia’s mother only speaks poorly, creating distance between her and the rest of the Nasir family. Sonia notes that “my first words were English, Haneen’s were Arabic” (191), a further difference between the sisters. The play is staged in formal Arabic, a language Sonia and the others have studied. However, it is not their primary language, as it is mainly used in scripture, literature, and stage productions. As a result, Sonia feels self-conscious about her use and pronunciation of the language during rehearsals. This panoply of languages highlights the heterogeneity of Palestinian identity.
The characters are hyper-aware of the implications of their choices of language. For instance, Sonia switches from English to Arabic when on the phone with her father at a coffee shop in Haifa to mildly antagonize a Jewish Israeli who is trying to chat her up in the hopes of deterring him. When Dawud/Yunes accuses Haneen of being Israeli, he speaks in Hebrew to underscore the point. The slippages between the languages are made clear at the border crossing where a sign at the border to the West Bank says, “The entrance for Israeli citizens is forbidden, dangerous to your lives” in English and Hebrew, but it reads “their lives [emphasis added]” in Arabic (75). These languages create borders analogous to the material border walls dividing the West Bank and Israel. Language in the novel contributes to The Challenge of Intimacy in Relationships, as it is a bridge that often connects or disconnects the characters from others.
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