Ghost in the Machine

Online Relationships: A path to love or mystery?

Online relationships have become very popular for people amongst our society. Before the internet or even the radio, people had to go out in person to look for relationships; they could not pretend to be someone different than who they really are. Since many things have gone digital, it has started to give people a false sense of reality. Joanne Harris, the author of “Ghost in the Machine” displays this by creating two characters in her short story, Phantom and Lady Shalott. The story gives evidence that online relationships can give one a false sense of reality because Phantom is just a face behind the radio, nobody knows what he looks like, most people just know him as the “voice behind the machine.” (pg. 160) and Lady Shalott is a blind women who listens to Phantom Radio every morning between three and five o’clock in the morning. She enjoys the station because the station plays “hours of oldies strung together with late-night monologues but sometimes, for her, there is something else.” (pg. 162) falls in love with him. She proves that one can fall in love with someones voice and the way they talk, without knowing what they look like which is why it can lead to a false sense of reality.

As a result of no one knowing how the Phantom looks or if he is a real person, it brings him joy. “The internet is his escape. No one needs to see him here. He can exist as an avatar; words on a screen; a voice in the dark. Here the world is his to explore; a world in which not only he, but no one has a face.” (pg.165) this proves that Phantom would rather be an avatar on the internet to the world rather than the person he is. Phantom has foreshadowed his thoughts because as the story progresses, we are told that he is not the type of person people enjoy looking at because of the hideous scars on his face. “people find him difficult to look at in the daylight. It is not so much the shape of his face, which is eccentric, nothing more, but the birthmark that disfigures him, a slap in the face from an angry God.”(pg. 168). He is on the radio every morning between three and five o’ clock in the morning, the graveyard shift. This is the time Lady Shallot listens to the radio. She enjoys listening at this time because they play “hours of oldies strung together with late-night monologues but sometimes, for her, there is something else.” This is where we find out that there is a connection between Phantom and Lady Shalott. She sends in requests of songs knowing she will not get a response but as her song comes on the radio, she realizes that there is