Saints at the River

Throughout Saints at the River there are many uses of symbolism in the novel. One of the main uses of symbolism is the Ghost that is brought up several times throughout the novel. Ghost in Saints at the River don’t actually mean real ghost that we think of but they are memories from the past that come back to haunt Maggie. Rash uses the ghost very effectively throughout the novel to make them symbolizes haunting memories from the past. The reason why Rash uses ghost as s symbol for the past is because the flashbacks and memories that Maggie has are all dark memories that came back to haunt her. These are memories that Maggie wishes she could forget, but some things in life are just not meant to be forgotten. These ghosts are introduced to us at the very beginning of the novel while Maggie is sitting at her desk starring at her computer screen wondering what the newsroom would have been like fifty years ago. She starts to wonder if their ghost were to come back to this newsroom they would think that it had turned into a hospital because of how quite it is now. (Rash 7) Although we are introduced to the ghost at the very start of the novel we don’t find out their true meaning until the end of the first chapter. Maggie comes back to her cubical after talking to Lee about going to Oconee County to cover a story about a little girl who drowned in the Tamassee River with her body caught in a hydraulic with no way to get her out. She starts to daydream again about what this newsroom was like forty or fifty and how much more exciting it would have been to work at a newsroom back then. Then Maggie takes the lid off her coffee it has a rich and dark odor that reminds her of fresh dug earth flung off by shovels to dig up her mother’s grave. Maggie tells herself, “ghost just more ghost.”(Rash 15) This is when we first find out that ghost are supposed to symbolize haunting memories from the past that will come up many times throughout the Saints at the River reminding