When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the novel’s depictions of racism.

Ghosts and hauntings appear across the novel as a recurring motif for The Lasting Effects of Grief and Trauma. The ghost of Millwood, Clive’s cousin who died in the war, embodies the long-lasting trauma carried by veterans of the Great War. While digging through the cave to rescue Two, Clive is “transported in body and mind back to the trenches, to lifting and tossing sandbags, wood, and corpses” (97). As he continues to dig, “dear dead friend after dear dead friend [arises]” before Clive in the cave (102). The most realistic of these ghosts is his dead cousin Millwood, who appears “fully formed, three-dimensional, and in his uniform” with “both of his arms […] attached” (103). Although Clive is initially disturbed by this vision, the ghost of Millwood assures Clive that “all of the other millions of dead” killed in the Great War “had also survived. They were still alive. Whole. In their prime” (105). The appearance of Millwood’s ghost helps to assuage some of Clive’s grief, enabling him to open himself up to a new relationship with Helen.

Verble presents the ghost of Little Elk as a manifestation of the trauma of violence against Indigenous individuals and communities. When Little Elk is “transported back to his death tree” (152) for the first time, he witnesses a group of white men robbing Indigenous graves and “decide[s] he’[s] been sent back to stop the desecration of the graves” (159). Later, Little Elk protects Two Feathers from Jack, another white man hoping to “keep her as his own” (190). The fact that Little Elk is repeatedly drawn back from his afterlife to protect Indigenous people demonstrates the long-lasting trauma of violence against native communities and points to the ongoing Racial and Ethnic Tensions in 1920s America.