The novel’s characters refuse to acknowledge the truth of their existence—the fact that they are dead. Instead, they are inexorably connected to their past lives, obsessed with misdeeds or unachieved ambitions, pining after people and places that used to exist, and despairing over old decisions. As we learn through the course of the novel, to move on from the bardo, the spirits trapped there must let go, realizing that impermanence is the point of life. As Buddhist tradition explains, people and things don’t belong to anyone; death is a time of transcendence.

The fact that the spirits appear as physical manifestations of their material world anchors builds on this theme. For instance, Roger’s fear of being discovered in a then-taboo homosexual relationship results in a spirit bedecked by extra faces, while Hans’s unconsummated matrimonial desires create a comically priapic ghost. When each finally gets the chance to take on their preferred appearance, we see these exaggerated features disappear: Roger now looks like a bluff sailor unafraid to express his love for his new partner, and Hans becomes happily celibate—the diametric opposite of his sex-crazed bardo self.

Abraham Lincoln’s reckonings with sorrow also play on this theme. During his dark night of the soul, when his grief for Willie prompts him to doubt the necessity of continuing the war to end slavery, Lincoln has an epiphany: Willie never belonged to him, no matter how much he loved his son.