5/27/2023 0 Comments Neil gaiman the graveyard bookThe influence of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book ( 1894) is also apparent, most obviously in the parallels between the two texts’ narrative structures, various similarities between characters (for example, Bod/Mowgli and Silas/Bagheera), and the overarching thematic concerns with identity and what it means to be human. All of these readings demonstrate how the individual chapters of the book act as stages of transition and markers of growth. Other studies have described the novel as a feral child narrative (McStotts, 2015) and as a morality tale (Seyford Hrezo, 2015). 81) suggests that the novel represents “the search for and actualisation of an identity,” starting with Bod’s acquired status as a displaced orphan (see also Mattix, 2012), and ending with his need to move beyond the world of the graveyard in his early teenage years. Arguing that The Graveyard Book operates as a tale that fuses numerous gothic and fairy-tale motifs, Joseph Abbruscato ( 2014, p. The Graveyard Book can be viewed as a novel about growth on many levels, most obviously in the linear narrative that marks Bod’s journey from orphaned toddler to a teenager on the verge of adulthood. For the latter, particular texts can generate moments of intense self-discovery and meta-reflection (see Spufford, 2002 Tatar, 2009). 1) argues that maturation “saturates children’s stories and colours narratives of every kind.” Growth may refer to the characters within the fictional world with their concerns and experiences, and to young readers who are developing their own knowledge of the world more generally. The “home-away-home again” pattern implies an individual’s growth towards a mature identity. The “home again” for Bod is as yet unspecified it rests as a series of potential pathways, beyond the fictional world of the novel itself. About the graveyard, he states: “If I come back, it will be a place, but it won’t be home any longer” (Gaiman, 2009, p. In fact, Gaiman reconfigures the home-away-home again pattern, since at the end of the novel Bod is not “home again” but rather homeless. Consequently Bod is able to pass his childhood and early teenage years there, before leaving to find an identity of his own. The graveyard replaces the family home to become a physical and emotional nurturing space, which offers safety. It represents an example of an untenable home and, therefore, a point of departure for Bod. 134)Īt the beginning of The Graveyard Book, the family home is violated by a murderer called Jack. The child protagonist constructs a new home because of an absence of home at the beginning or because the home is untenable. The children don’t return to the same home, if they return home at all. The child leaves from a place the child doesn’t (or can’t) consider home to go on a journey, psychological or literal, to a new home that the child has constructed. Home should then be understood as “failed or absent,” and a point of departure for the transformation into a better self. Melissa Wilson and Kathy Short ( 2012) argue that postmodern children’s literature dispels the nostalgic myth of home as a safe and comforting place. However, Nodelman is careful to point out that this binary opposition is complicated by the fact that the home returned to (or home again) cannot be the same as the one from which the character started a new sense of home will arise due to the protagonist’s experiences (Nodelman, 2008, p. Generally, child characters that want to leave home are viewed as too immature to appreciate its comfort and protection the “away,” although attractive, is always represented in ultimately less than favourable terms. Perry Nodelman ( 2008) considers a “home-away-home again” pattern to be prevalent in children’s literature, where authors promote the adult’s authority and superior knowledge by emphasising the safety of home for the implied child reader. This binary distinction can also operate on the levels of overarching narrative structure and plot design, with home offering both a point of departure for the events of a particular story and a necessary resting place (Bates, 2007). 130), which serves to emphasise the relationship of the main (child) character to the places of “‘home’ and ‘not home’” (Stott and Francis, 1993, p. Indeed, across children’s literature, there is often a “metaplot” (Wilson and Short, 2012, p. For example, Virginia Wolf argues that the motif of the mythical home demonstrates “our continued need for the possibilities of unity, certainty, and perfection” ( 1990, p. The symbolic importance of the home as a place where a child ideally grows up, under the loving care and supervision of parents, has been emphasised by various scholars working in children’s literature. The first scenes of The Graveyard Book take place in the family home, although the exact location is not revealed until the end of the novel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |