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The Meaning of Ghosts in The Turn of the Screw:A Deconstructive ApproachByungjoo ParkThis paper aims to find out the meaning of ghosts by analyzing The Turn of the Screw with a deconstructive perspective.Generally, criticism on this novel has been divided into three groups: the psychological approach, the anti-psychological approach and the autobiographical approach. But though they have led to some stimulating criticism, it seems to be misreading. They reduced this novel to the very simplified versions by fixing the meaning of ghosts.Therefore, I interpreted governess’s tale in terms of deconstructive criticism to find out the meaning of ghosts. A ghost is neither present nor absent in the story itself. But the governess attempts to fix a single meaning to two ghosts by insisting that two ghosts are Quint and Jessel respectively. I explored that James's position is not to tell just a ghost story but to show that ghosts are the products of the governess's obsessive interpretation.This paper shows that James is at once establishing non-origin in the place of origin and focusing our attention on the question of the origin. After all, James at once reveals and conceals the question of the origin.Finally, we can say that this novel is a riddle that teaches us something essential about dangers of interpretation.