Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Graveyard Book
The beginning of The Graveyard Book reminds me of a fireside ghost story, “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” That was the kind of story that could give me nightmares for weeks as a child but, after my initial visceral reaction, I found the creepy/scary beginning to be of minor importance. The scene passed quickly, and then I was absorbed completely into the world of the graveyard. I was thinking about the discussion in class with Zeta Elliot about what we all found appealing about children’s literature and what I realized is that The Graveyard Book encompasses a lot of the qualities that were important to me as a child. I looked to books often for guidance that was missing from my own childhood. The Graveyard Book offers a road map of sorts into adulthood. Bod is making the passage through the story from childhood, into adolescence, and finally, as he leaves the graveyard, into adulthood. He has guides who direct his emotional growth: Mrs. Owens, the poet and Silas. There are those responsible for his intellect: Mr. Pennyworth, Miss. Lupescu and Silas, and those who take care of him physically: Mr. and Mrs. Owens, Liza, when he breaks his leg and when he gets trapped, and, again, Silas. “It will ...take a graveyard [to raise this child],” says Silas. Silas seems to have the role of the omnipotent and infallible adult. I know these were qualities I often attributed to adults in my life when I was young. So, if I have any question for you guys, I guess it is, did this story resonate for anyone else as an allegory for growing up? Obviously, Bod’s story is of his development into a young man, but the ways in which Gaiman uses the graveyard and the inhabitants, echo for me, the challenge of trying to grow up in a complicated world.
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I do agree that although an adult can surely appreciate his work, Gaiman is predominantely speaking to a younger crowd. It is obvious that one of the main issues he deals with is death, which very young children do not have any concept of (hopefully) but it is something that children become more and more conscious about as they grow up. I feel that, among other things, Gaiman was trying to give children a way to cope with death by creating a story in which the division between life and death is so obscure and where the dead are so "alive". In this way, he is telling the child that even though it may seem like death is the ultimate end, the dead people are still alive in a certain sense, we are just unable to access the world in which they now reside because Nobody (pun intended) can. I believe that if my own children were to be faced with a situation of death (i.e. someone close to them died) I would hand them this book to aid them in coming to terms with it.
ReplyDeleteEsther raises a really interesting issue. I remember when I was in first grade and a classmate had passed away. The school called my mom and she said "Daniel died" and I remember saying "I'm sure he'll be okay, the hospital will fix him." I really had no idea what death was at the time, and then I think about Bod being exposed to it at such a very young age.
ReplyDeleteThis all begins to harp back onto Guiliana's comment and a comment that Tony made in class. Yes, Gaiman is likely telling the story of a boy growing up from infancy, to adolescence and to finally adulthood. But you would expect a child so exposed to death to have a "fast" growth curve--someone who would end up on The Maury Show as a 12 year old drug addict with 18 sexual partners and living on his or her own already. Instead Gaiman gives him a normal growth curve and at least tries (not very well), though not very well to show him at various ages being normal for those ages even though he is growing up in this "other" world that kids and adults today are not used to.
The story of Nobody Owens was a great delight to me until it ended, i am probably one of the few people who probably found the ending inadequate. The manner in which the author ended this amazing story was sort of reductive in a way and somewhat rushed. My qualm starts from the fact that we are tricked into an emotional bond with Nobody Owens and through it all the only consolation we get at the end is that Bod moves into the real world, can you say DULL. There are so many impressions i got from this ending all of which are not that convincing and embarrassingly cliche. The idea that Bod's consolation is a one way ticket to the living world got me asking the question, what is so great about the living? i do really feel Bod was cheated out of being who he is, and who is Nobody Owens? I say he is more of a ghost than a living human, therefore, it was unfair that he is stripped of all that he is, all in the name of a pulse.
ReplyDeleteAdeshola- I really appreciate your comment! Without having identified it so clearly, I also felt some dissatisfaction with the ending. I think that was part of my joking about wishing Nobody could secure a plot to go back when he dies. Who are we but products of our environments? And Nobody's is such a loving and supportive one. Why would we want to see him leave. I guess I resolved this for myself in my feelings that in order to grow up fully he had to leave, as we all do to fully mature. But he does have to leave behind him some unusual essence of himself and it does feel like in some way he is short changed. He doesn't get to go home for spring break. Doesn't really seem fair.
ReplyDeleteBod certainly has to leave a lot behind him. An interesting question to explore, though, is what is it that Bod takes with him?
ReplyDeleteThe lullaby that Mistress Owens sings at the very end of the book suggests something similar to Prof Natov's Wordsworth quote about 'the philosophic mind':
"...Sleep until waken / When you wake you'll see the world / If I'm not mistaken..."
The child's world of imagination, or Bod's world of spirits, is sacrificed when they cross the portal into adult hood. However, Ms Owens' lullaby points towards an awakening to a new world once that threshold is crossed.
The whole story may have just been allegory for growing up. I guess it all depends on the way you look at it, as well as reflecting on your own childhood.
ReplyDeleteSomeyimes being a child is a very scary thing. You are small and young iwth little or no experince in life, and you may very well belive anynone since you do not know that there are crooks in the world.
I rememeber being somtimes very scared when I was a little girl. A child cannot always separate reality from fantasy, and thsi can cause a tragic burden over a young soul.
So, I would have to answer that it al depends on hwo you viewe your childhood.
I agree with Giulana that the story functions largely as an allegory for growing up, and I also agree with Esther about its function to help children cope with death. But I see the latter as another point in the plot of a coming-of-age story. In other words, every coming-of-age story has some dilemma that the child must surmount. In this case it is this boundary between life and death.
ReplyDelete