"The Ghost  --  A Christmas Frolic" by John Massey Wright depict a scene that a boy played as a mannequin ghost holding a candle who frightened the adults at a dinner party. The image has a special framing, structure, and highly obvious and reflexible content to what the illustrator is trying to tell the audience.

The angle from the painting is a position as a spectator that overview the whole event, which created dramatic ironies that emphasized a lot of details while the characters inside the picture wouldn't notice. For example, we know there is a child behind the mannequin, but the adults in the image don't know. The matter of it adds suspense and keeps the audience captivated, by letting us think questions like "that is not a ghost" or "running from a kid is ridiculous", and the image doesn't necessarily appeal to our emotions, because the image seemed gruesome and terrifying, but the audience will appears nothing close to terrifying because they already know the "ghost" is not a real existence. The reason why the image is illustrated from an overview angle is because the context might change if the angle is different, and it might not show what the illustrator is trying to say. For example, if audiences view the image as first-person perspective, which is from the people that ran away from the "ghost", the whole image would become a lot more gruesome, because they couldn't see the kid behind the mannequin and neither do we. Plus, the image will only show what an individual's eyes captured if it is illustrated from a first-person angle, which limited the context audiences can perceive because in the overviewing angle, we observed different peoples' position such as the angle they were facing, which we don't in an individual angle of vision.

We view an image more than just looking at the angle, but also the framing of it.  The declaration of the room is gruesome such as the portrait and the deer head on the wall. Those declarations made the room look weird and lead audience into a frightened state. The people were all at the left side of the image which is the exit way. This reflected the cowardice of the human nature and it affected the audience by bringing them into the scenario because of the distinct comparison of the structure. If people were spread out to the entire image, the audiences will not discover the odd difference. Besides the structure of the image, the color of the image is mainly black and white, which enhanced the horror effect of the image and brought the audience into the image further. The reason why black and white can bring audience into the image is because the overall tradition within black and white gives people suspense, while different colors can actually send different information to audience. For example, if the clothes people wore are red, which is associated with energy, war, danger, power, passion, etc., it created perspectives and made illustrator's ideas unclear. 

The effect of the overall picture is dramatic, but the specific details can even express more information than viewing the image overly. In the image, most of the people ran out to the door, while some people had different acts. One of the women ran upstairs while another one was fainted, one of the men hid behind the door, and several of the people fell down on the floor. These different acts actually reflected various features. For example, the man that hid behind the door shows that he might be a weak and coward person, while that the man who got tripped off but trying to fight back shows that he is a tough and brave person. The woman that went fainted straightly and the little girl that asked for help might reflected that female and child didn't have much of the right back at the time which related to the history about women were not allowed to vote in Great Britain. This is also reflected in the image by showing the different reaction between the male and female, in other words is the comparison that men actually had the thought of fighting with "evil", while women did not.

Another example for the specific detail was about the old lady upstairs. She seemed like that she had a gruesome face and did not have legs. The appearance made her be assumed the real ghost. Another reason of it is because the mannequin was holding a lightened candle, which is the symbol of exorcism, and the old lady was located at the very right-top corner, which is the farthest position away from it because she is afraid of the light. This kind of position probably made her be the last character to be seen in the image, which conform to the common sense that bad things are always the last things people want to see. However, people totally neglected her but focused on the "fake ghost". We can tell by peoples' eyes in the image because people were all looking at the mannequin, even the lady who ran upstairs didn't realize the old lady. The illustrator uses this to express a scary political matter, that the fact about people ignored the "real ghost" reflected the reality at that moment that might had some potential threats, they were obvious but people did not figure them out.  Another reason why the detail contains political or historic matter is because the appearances of the peoples' clothes made them look like groups of politician, and the event of this image seems to be a dinner with meeting, and back in the time the topic people talked about are always politically-relevant.

Generally speaking, "The Ghost- A Christmas Frolic" is special via its overviewing angle, unevenly odd structure, general perspective of black and white, and the detail that reflected to both histories and political contents that expressed illustrator's ideas.

The ghost-a Christmas frolic-le revenant. John Massey Wright. London: Pub. By Hassell & Richards, 1814 Decr. 24. Forms part of: British Cartoon Prints Collection (Library of Congress) The Carolina Reader: for English 101. Ed. USC Department of English. Plymouth, MI: Hayden McNeil. 311
