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THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE GHOST SHIP


Garica Marquez

This story is about the powerful imagination of the boy. Sometimes a person’s creative power becomes so sharp that he can see his vision in concrete form. A normal mind with limited power of creativity hardly sees such picture. This story which is written by applying stream of consciousness technique explains how a boy deepens his observation and grows from an ordinary boy to an assertive young man. 

The boy, who is also main character of the story used to go to the sea where he  used to see a mysterious ship in his childhood. The ship used to appear when there was darkness. The ship was bigger than the village and taller than the steeple of the church. But he could not see the ship in the later years. However the boy didn't stop going to sea. He had determined to show the existence of ship to the villager after he was beaten on charge of being a liar. After many years he saw the same ship by the harbour

When the story starts we find the boy is already grown into assertive man, when he asserts, “Now they are going to see who I am.” But in the very next line we are made familiar about the past events through stream of consciousness technique (it is a technique of language where no punctuation marks are kept. Furthermore, past, present and future tense is also used simultaneously. The language in this technique reflects the thoughts in the mind). Four years ago in March, the boy saw a huge ship, which lost its way, crushed to a rock and sank. There were no lights on the ship. Neither had it appeared in the light of the lighthouse. He could only see the ship in extreme darkness. The next day when he went to the seashore he didn't see anything unusual, so the boy knew that it was only his dream. Since he was himself not sure about that vision for the first time, he didn't tell anybody about that.

In March exactly one year later during the night the boy saw the same thing. He told his mother about it when he found himself awake. She did not believe on him and thought that he was becoming crazy/lunatic. She asked one of the boatman to watch the ship for her son. The boatman could not find the ship. After the death of boy's father 11 years ago, the mother had been spending all of her time sitting in a chair and thinking about her dead husband. Now the mother's chair has become old, she needed to buy a different one. The boy goes with his mother. While they are in the boat, the mother shows the boy that there is no broken ship at the bottom of the sea. But the boy still believes that the ship is real and it will come next year like it did for the last two years. To console her son she promised to watch the next year, but she died the night while she was sitting in a new chair thinking of her dead husband. In the mean time four other women die while sitting in the same chair. Thus, the villages threw the evil chair into the sea.

As an orphan boy he did not live by charity. Instead, he stole the fish to live. On the same night in March another year the boy saw the big and the whole ship as earlier. He told it to the villagers. But when they did not see the ship they beat him black and blue. He became angry and planned for next year. One year later on the same night in March the boy steals a boat so that he can get near the big ship. He takes the boat to where he has seen the ship in the past. When the ship arrives the boy lights a lamp in his boat. The big ship after seeing the light on his boat, begins to follow him. The boy leads the ship towards the village. When the ship gets close to the village it blows its loud whistle. The people of the village wake up and come out of their houses. The ship comes onto the ground by the village and stops moving in front of the church. Now the villagers see the ship and believe the boy. He feels happy.

In this way, the story shows the transformation of a fanciful boy into bold and courageous man. As an ordinary boy he imagined different things. He was confused by emotion and frightened by miracle. But when he was beaten and isolated he becomes strong to prove his adulthood. As a result, he drags the ship and makes people surprise. As he showed the light, a miracle happened. The light of the lamp helped the ship to correct it way and it followed the boy. The boy brought the ship to the village. The boy guided the ship towards the village. At last he took the ship there. The ship blasted as it reached there. The gigantic ship was 97 times longer than the village and 20 times taller than the church. The boy imagined that its loud siren had woken the whole village and they were looking at the ship in disbelieve.  As he was a small boy, he couldn't recognise and know the real existence of the ship but at last he made a strong decision and plan to meet the ship anyhow and expose him really that he was. He got success with his immaturity. The success and maturity developed are interrelated. He could solve the mystery with his courage and idea which is the result of his maturity. No one else knows the existence of the ship because it was the boy’s imagination. When he saw the great whale he shouted as if the miraculous ship appeared there but it was not reality. 

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