The use of supernatural elements

Part of your exam question asks you to focus on the use of supernatural elements in Bernie McGill's short story “No Angel”.

The short story is an account of various supernatural encounters between the narrator and her dead father. Towards the end, the narrator also senses the presence of her dead brother although she does not know it is him. In the last scene, the narrator sees all her dead family members in an opera house: her father, her brother, and her mother.

The presence of the dead father is often described as something common and natural. He does not look like a ghost, but like his living self:

His skin was more yellow maybe; more so at the nicotine-stained finger tips,
 ‘Are they treating you well?’ I asked him.
‘So, so. The food's not great. Nothing seems to have much of a taste.’ (ll. 13-16)

Furthermore, their conversations are also natural and similar to those they had when he was alive:

‘He'll never set foot on my farm,’ he said.
‘He's a Maths teacher, Daddy. He doesn't want your farm.’
‘He says that now,’ he grunted.’ (ll. 57-59)

This humane portrait of the father after death, as a man preserving all his human traits and opinions, makes death more acceptable for the narrator.

However, the way her father appears and disappears all of a sudden maintains a supernatural, occasionally scary feel: “ ‘What's that oul' shite you're listening to?’...

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