Throughout The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, there are many different tactics used to show how intense and suspenseful the book really is. Neil Gaiman does an excellent job of creating a nail-biting mood during the duration of the book. Intense events and exquisite details contributed to Gaiman’s success of the doing this. The situations Nobody Owens finds himself in also helps, to make The Graveyard Book, a classic suspenseful fiction book. In the text a background story regarding the “SLEER”
Neil Gaiman’s Stardust is not the typical fairytale that people every have gotten so used to hearing. Looking at how Gaiman somehow adheres to both Northrop Frye’s mythos of summer and winter, in addition to the strange cast of characters, and the unique setting of the novel; readers obtain an experience unparalleled to the classic fairytale. Gaiman follows all the rules of Vladimir Propp’s structure for a fairytale, but in an unconventional way. His heavy use of irony is what keeps the story interesting
The novel Good Omens is a satirical rendition of Armageddon in almost all aspects. The story begins with the coming of the Antichrist, brought into the world as a human infant though it is anything but. An angel and a demon, Aziraphale and Crowley respectively, and rather good friends considering their rather checkered past, have teamed up to ensure that The End is, in the very least, late. They take roles in molding the child to see both the sides of good and evil, trying to make it so that the
Throughout this semester we have dissected the meaning of childhood in children’s literature. Neil Gaiman does the same in his novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I feel that there are universal truths about childhood, and that childhood is different than adulthood. Neil Gaiman is a unique writer, and in his novel are passages that support my idea on childhood. One of my favorite passages in Gaiman’s novel is: “I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced
author of The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, doesn’t deserve all of the credit for his bestselling novel because he wasn’t totally original. The Graveyard Book has many different scenes that are just like Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Gaiman does acknowledge that he wanted to follow the same fundamentals as The Jungle Book in his Newberry Medal acceptance speech when he said, “I
Neil Gaiman's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream from his book The Sandman: Volume 3: Dream Country is a twisted version of the well known Shakespeare play that includes an audience of strange creatures, some of which were used in the play. With the help of artist Charles Vess, Gaiman's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream comes alive through bold colors and imagery and the use of facial and body expressions that differ among those who are human and those who are not. This paper will look
In his 2008 novel, The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman breaks down the boundaries between the world of the dead and that of the living. Gaiman presents an irony in his novel by endowing the dead residents of the graveyard with a caring nature. He depicts the graveyard as a safe place that nurtures innocence in contrast to the living world. Silas, one of the chief characters, remains shrouded in mystery throughout the novel, and his existence is not stated very clearly, neither amongst the living nor
argue that this generation, the generation of technology, has lost all connections with heavenly figures. Should humans be abandoned by these figures, the world will end in peril. Themes like these are what inspire books such as American Gods by Neil Gaiman. The novel features Shadow—a quiet, street-smart man—who has just been released from jail after his involvement in a robbery. His wife and best friend die in a car crash days before his release. He has no family, no friends, and no job to go home
no longer any magic or mystery. Neil Gaiman and Antoine De Saint-Exupry write two different novels that include multitudes of fantasy. But in the midst of all of the fantasy is the fact that children and adults think differently. Both of these novels explore the idea that children think positively while adults grow out of that stage, developing a pessimistic way of thinking from what they experience in life. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, written by Gaiman, juxtaposes a child’s point view
because they feel a need to write as it gives their own lives significance. Author Neil Gaiman wrote that once he begins writing a story, he feels a moment where the “story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and [he] knows what it’s about and why [he’s] doing it” (Gaiman, 1). Stories are told to make sense of an otherwise seemingly meaningless existence, and as seen with Gaiman, a story that comes to life bears the fruits of motivation. Equally important are
In this modern fictional book, American Gods, Neil Gaiman writes an incredible story using what we know about classical mythology to create a more modern tale here in the present. The book begins with an ex-convict widower, named Shadow, that begins to work with a mysterious figure named Mr. Wednesday. Throughout the book we learn that all the gods known from the past are real ,and are being threatened by the new modern gods. Gaiman writes an incredible modernized tale, all the while keeping some
of the story and created a Gothic narrative out of the fairy tale and Gaiman created a whole new postmodern version of the Sandman but he again kept the roots of the Sandman myth. Works Cited Andersen, Hans Christian. "Ole Lukoie." Hans Christian Andersen : Ole Lukoie. The Hans Christian Andersen Center, 08 Oct. 2013. Web. 07 Mar. 2014. A translation of Hans Christian Andersen's "Ole Lukøie" by Jean Hersholt. Gaiman, Neil. The Sandman. New York: DC Comics, 1991. Print. "Morpheus." Greek God
Understanding the Work of Neil Gaiman Using Psychoanalytic and Archetypal Lenses Symbols, expression, personality, feelings, elemental patterns, and expression of life; these are just a few adjectives for the work of Neil Gaiman. The adjectives used to describe his work also describe , archetypal and psychoanalytic critical lenses, using these lenses help analyze his short story called “Cinnamon” ( In Neil Gaimans work of “Cinnamon”, Gaiman uses many symbols, elemental patterns, and connotations;
stage, Neil Gaiman is here to remind us that when faced with the unknown, make good art. In his commencement speech to the class of 2012 at the University of the Arts, Neil Gaiman effectively reassures the graduates that even when you fail, art will be there to guide you down your path.
In this essay, I will be analyzing and comparing two research articles; The Other Mother: Neil Gaiman’s Postfeminist Fairytales by Elizabeth Parsons, Naarah Sawers, and Kate McInally and Good Mother/Bad Mother: Cultural Motherhood from “Hansel and Gretel” to “Coraline,” by Emily Culp, that delve greater into Coraline and how motherhood is portrayed in the book. The novel tells the story of a young girl named Coraline Jones; she is a quirky, imaginative girl who genuinely loves adventure. Her real
The Archetypal Pantheon Archetypes are everywhere, both in real life and in literature around the world, and humans know them all. American Gods is a fantasy novel written by Neil Gaiman in 2001. The book revolves around the premise that every god that has been believed in has manifested into human form and has traveled to America through the minds of immigrants. Shadow Moon is the main character in this novel, which follows his adventure with the American gods. Wednesday, Odin, is Shadow’s boss
structure that the protagonist follows through. The typical quest structure is as followed: an ideal happiness, disruption of the ideal happiness, tasks to reinstate happiness, and finally the reinstating of happiness. The cycle is never broken. In Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, this quest structure is abandoned. Unlike the typical quest structure, the protagonist, Coraline, undergoes a coming of age quest in which the quest structure deviates from the typical structure. Coraline’s quest signifies her coming
Midsummer Night's Dream deals with the reality-distorting drug known as love, Hamlet is about accepting artifice for reality. Two interesting adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream are the 1999 film directed by Michael Hoffman and the issue by Neil Gaiman... ... middle of paper ... ...h reality versus the appearance of reality and various types of madness that occur when the line between the two is crossed. The various adaptations of these plays play on these themes in new and creative ways.
Theme Good Vs Evil in The Graveyard Book In The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Jack was a killer who entered in a home in the middle of the night with a knife. He used the knife and kill three people in the house, the mother, the father, and the older sister. While the baby was woken up he heard his family being killed, so he jumped out of his crib, left the house and went up to the hill in the graveyard. When Jack went to the crib to kill the eighteen-month-old baby, he then realized that the
Neverwhere as an Intrusive Fantasy In the novel Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, points could be made that it could fall into the category many of the fantasy types described by Farah Mendlesohn in Rhetorics of Fantasy. However, after reading more and more of Gaiman’s novel, my argument is that Neverwhere is most like an intrusion fantasy. Neverwhere has the element of bringing chaos into the normal world from London below into London above, and in turn into Richard’s life, therefore following the main