The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman

by Burke, Jessica

  When Death and John Constantine performed a public-service announcement about sexually transmitted diseases and the importance of using condoms in Death: The High Cost of Living,55 The Endless may be said to have finally jumped the shark. The announcement nevertheless confirmed the prominence of—if not comfort with—sexuality in Gaiman’s Sandman franchise, as well as its involvement with mythical and otherwise supernatural elements and themes. This quality is established within the opening pages of volume one Preludes and Nocturnes, where a woman named Unity Kincaid unwittingly sets in motion the central thread of The Sandman story. Falling asleep the night Dream is imprisoned by occultists, she like many others falls victim to a sleeping sickness that rarely sees her awake. She is impregnated while asleep—raped by an unnamed assailant— and it is not until The Doll’s House, fifty years later in the story, that we meet Rose Walker, her grand-daughter, a generation removed from the crime. She turns out to be what Dream calls a Dream Vortex, a person capable of disrupting the order of The Dreaming and potentially destroying entire worlds. It is a lamentable tradition that Dream must kill the Dream Vortex when it arises in order to prevent chaos, though Unity Kincaid intervenes and rightfully takes Rose’s place.56 Dream then realizes that Unity’s rapist—and Rose’s grandfather—must have been Desire, presumably one of the “little games” that only Despair, Desire, and Delirium of the Endless play.57 Dream calls Rose Walker one of his own blood,58 someone he could not kill without dire consequences, and his confrontation with Desire is marked by this remonstration:

  We of the Endless are the servants of the living—we are NOT their masters. WE exist because they know, deep in their hearts, that we exist. When the last living thing has left this universe, then our task will be done. And we do not manipulate them. If anything, they manipulate us. We are their toys. Their dolls, if you will. And you—and Despair, and even poor Delirium—should remember that.59

  Nevertheless, Desire hasmanipulated them, and the results of that action will move far beyond the events of The Doll’s House. The plot is as intricate and as labyrinthine as only a long-lasting serial title can be, but Rose Walker’s brother Jed, who is also a scion of the Endless, is in many ways responsible for Daniel Hall, whom Dream claims as his own after his mother spent years gestating in The Dreaming. Once Daniel has been taken—not, however, by Dream—the vengeance of his mother Hippolyta raises the ire of the Three, who pursue vengeance on Dream when he breaks some sort of celestial law after ending the life of his son Orpheus. The final panel of The Doll’s House states that Desire, alone in its (his/her) realm with mannequin-castle arms-upraised, “feels nothing like a doll. / Nothing like a doll at all,”60 suggesting that the Endless are not so impotent as Dream assumes.

  Orchestrated births are a feature in several other of Gaiman’s works, though in more concerted a narrative fashion than The Sandman. The birth of Shadow in American Gods, for example, is revealed to be part of Loki and Wednesday’s scheme to resecure their divine ascendance, while Tristran Thorn in Stardust is both the child of Lady Una of Stormhold, as well as the agent of her liberation and accession of the throne. There are, furthermore, offspring of the gods whose lives are more consequential than sequential to a grand design; Charlie Nancy, son of the Ashanti trickster Anansi in Anansi Boys, leads a mediocre existence for the most part, seemingly the result rather than the instrument of his father’s antics. There are, furthermore, numerous sexual encounters between mythical figures and humans—especially in American Gods—which are not necessarily about offspring; in “Calliope” in American Gods, two writers successively imprison and rape the Muse of epic poetry in order to achieve literary inspiration and fame.

  The mixing of sexuality and mythology is in many ways analogous to Gaiman’s prolific storytelling. Though The Sandman series with its many gods and spirits has long been concluded, Gaiman’s use and reuse of myths, legends, and other bodies of story has branched out into all media and genres—from television through box-office films to children’s books and superhero comics in both the DC and Marvel universes. The coexistence of all these figures and traditions within a single imaginative reality is always conceivable if not explicit, and puts Gaiman in league with the likes of Stephen King, Anne Rice, H.P. Lovecraft and many others who have woven their works into single mythos. Literature from all historical periods has developed and reshaped the myths of preexisting traditions, but the pan-pantheon is a remarkably modern development, and one which Gaiman handles preeminently. Owed to a combination of modern secularism, multiculturalism, and relativism—not to mention the countless encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and studies of world myths and legends—the ancient practice of subsuming and streamlining belief systems has given way to a fully pluralistic and accretive understanding of myth. As for the originals from which his stories draw, and despite the success he has enjoyed through retellings, there is humility to be found in many of Gaiman’s public reflections, and even in the mouths of his characters. When in The Sandman story “Men of Good Fortune,” Hob Gadling mentions a version of King Lear with a happy ending, Dream says “[t]hat will not last. The Great Stories will always return to their original forms.”61Nevertheless, and as Death tells Urania Blackwell in “Façade,” “[m]ythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you.”62

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  1 Gaiman, Kindly Ones, 23.

  2 (Gaiman, Mists, 112). Gaiman’s position that Loki is Æsir only by blood-brotherhood exploits the ambiguity of the original literary sources; reportedly sired by a giant, Loki is listed in the Edda of Snorri Sturluson as being simply “numbered among the Æsir,” which, as elucidated by John Lindow, means he may not in fact be one of them. See Lindow, 216.

  3 Dictionary of English Etymology, 647.

  4 Greek–English Lexicon, 1298.

  5 The original Pantheon is now known as the Santa Maria Rotunda; it has been a place of worship of the Roman Catholic Church since 609 CE.

  6 The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “pantheon” (def. 2) 149.

  7 The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 744.

  8 Tolkien makes it reasonably clear, however, that the Valar are not, in fact, gods, but are created beings of a lesser order than their maker, Eru. “Valaquenta” states that “Men have often called them gods” (Tolkien, Silmarillion, 23); Tolkien puts the word in quotations (‘gods’) when referring to the Valar in his letters (Tolkien, Letters, 193).

  9 Gaiman, Mists, 102.

  10 The standard name—and headword—for the god, as opposed to the honorific Susano-o-noMikoto, which is His Brave Swift Impetuous Male Augustness. Susano-Wo spells this out himself (Gaiman, Mists, 112); it is also elaborated in Turner and Coulter, 445.

  11 Gaiman, Mists, 148.

  12 Ibid.

  13 The character Prospero appears in a remarkably similar aspect in Gaiman, “The Tempest.” (Gaiman, Wake, 157).

  14 (Gaiman, Mists, 170). The Greek gods are absent here, but readers met the Muse Calliope in the eponymous story in Dream Country, while Orpheus, Hades, and Persephone appear in Fables and Reflections. The Fates—both in person and in influence—are ubiquitous throughout The Sandman stories, appearing as an aspect of the Three.

  15 Some dictionaries of gods and goddesses index their entries by sphere of influence as well as national origin: see Jordan, 301-9.

  16 Gaiman, Mists, 148.

  17 Examples are from the following sources: Ishtar appears in “Chapter 4,” Brief Lives; Anansi is in both American Gods and Anansi Boys; Czernobog and Easter appear in American Gods.

  18 Physical manifestations of these forces appear in Gaiman, Mists, 101.

  19 Hunt, 213-24.

  20 The name goes unmentioned in Gustav Davidson’s Dictionary of Angels; it is assumed to be a pseudoHebraic invention of Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

  21 See “Orpheus” in March, 572.

  22 potmos(destiny);teleute(the Last [one]); oneiros(dream); olethros(des
truction); epithumia(desire); aponoia (desperation); mania (madness); the choice to translate Death as Teleute is likely to avoid confusion and/or conflation with the existing Greek figure Thanatos, whose name means “Death,” and who is traditionally the twin brother of Hypnos. See “Thanatos” in March, 738.

  23 See Gaiman, “Collectors,” Doll’s House, 168-9. Glob also warns Brute that saying Morpheus’s name could allow him entry into their pocket dimension of the Dreaming; see Gaiman, “Playing House,” Doll’s House, 96.

  24 Gaiman, The Books of Magic, passim.

  25 Gaiman. Spawn, passim.

  26 Gaiman, “I, Cthulhu,” as well as Gaiman, “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar” in Smoke and Mirrors, 147-59.

  27 Gaiman, “Passengers,” Preludes, 147.

  28 Though Gaiman’s pan-pantheon is pluralistic, there are conflations and overlaps. Consider, for example, the shifting identities of the Three in “Imperfect Hosts,” Preludes, 73. Compare as well the coexistence of the Greek realm (and god) of Hades (see Gaiman, “The Song of Orpheus, Part 3,” Fables,

  182-6) with the name of Hades as a synonym for the Hell ruled by Lucifer (Gaiman, Mists, 39, 43).

  29 Keightley, 325.

  30 Gaiman, Worlds’ End, 46, 49.

  31 The being is a common entry in many resources. See, for example, “cluricaune” in MacKillop, 92.

  32 It should be acknowledged, however, that two of the Three in The Sandman imply themselves to be aspects of the Morrígan and possibly Morgaine (Gaiman, “Imperfect Hosts,” Preludes, 73); in American Gods, meanwhile, and besides the appearance of the Morrígan, the leprechaun Mad Sweeney is a prominent character.

  33 Gaiman, Brief Lives, 12.

  34 See Wood, 36-7.

  35 It is never made clear when exactly Pharamond and Dream met in Babylon, but the city was utterly desolate and historically obscure at least a century before the birth of Christ. By the time of the Frankish king Pharamond, it can hardly be said to have existed at all. It can only be assumed—in keeping with the theme of Brief Lives—that Pharamond and Dream met at the height of Babylon, as long as four thousand years ago (Gaiman, Brief Lives, 20).

  36 See Huehnergard and Woods, 230.

  37 Ishtar meets her end in Gaiman, Brief Lives, 20-4.

  38 Gaiman, Brief Lives, 21.

  39 See, variously, Gaiman,“I Woke Up and One of Us Was Crying,” Game, 171, where Thessaly says, upon being asked how old she is, that she was born “in the day of the greatest darkness, in the year the bear totem was shattered.” In Gaiman, Brief Lives, Bernie Capax recalls not having smelled a mammoth since he was a child (2-3). Shadow’s first dream-encounter with the buffalo-headed man in American Gods, happens, as the creature describes, “[i]n the earth and under the earth […] where the forgotten wait,” 18.

  40 Delaney, Introduction. A Game of You [10].

  41 A collaborative franchise may be defined as any body of characters and their stories that is developed by numerous writers, particularly over many years, and resulting in the loss of continuity. At best, development may be steadily accretive, but such coherence is unlikely save with a single author and/or a brief period of development. Evidence from franchises in all eras—including Classical myth, Arthurian legend, and even Star Trek—demonstrates that accumulative treatments of a tradition most often create an incoherent web of material, including divergent accounts of similar episodes, as well as various episodes of uncertain relationships with one another.

  42 For a comprehensive outline of this subject, as well as a configuration of reality, fiction, and imagination, see Iser, ix-xix, 1-21.

  43 Delaney, [8].

  44 For an outline, see .

  45 “Treehouse of Horror X,” The Simpsons.

  46 See “liminal beings” in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 581-2.

  47 “[B]ut students of folklore must simply find it in their hearts to forgive me for, at one stroke of my pen and my heart, changing [Rev. B. W.] Ashton’s Hototogisu bird into a raven.” Gaiman, “Afterword,” The Dream Hunters, [128]. Gaiman also speaks in terms of a potential crime committed when he and Roger Avary’s screenplay for Beowulfneglected to send Beowulf back to his homeland, and instead had him become king of Denmark; see “The Origins of Beowulf,” Beowulf. Director’s Cut. 48 See entries “Samael,” and “Lucifer” in Davidson, 255, 176. The Sandman does not ever nominate Lucifer as ‘Satan’ or ‘the Devil’, but for a defense of the gradual interchangeability of Lucifer and other names for the Devil, see Russell, 247.

  49 Odin—which is properly spelled Oðinn and pronounced Othinn (with the th voiced as in clothe) is another example, though its pronunciation, like Loki, has been conventionalized. See Orchard, where it is insisted that the more accurate headwords might seem pedantic in the face of longstanding conventions [17].

  50 Gilmore, 10.

  51 Gaiman, Gods, 587.

  52 “A Hero’s Journey: The Making of Beowulf,” in Beowulf. Director’s Cut.

  53 Perhaps no more so than in Gaiman, “24 Hours,” Preludes, though also in “Calliope,” Dream Country, where two writers rape the Muse to receive her inspiration (also considered below). 54 Gaiman, “Calliope,” Dream Country, 19.

  55 Gaiman, High Cost, 95-101.

  56 Unity claims—and Dream agrees—that she would have been the vortex if he hadn’t been imprisoned, and the Dreaming interrupted. Gaiman, “Lost Hearts,” Doll’s House, 216. 57 Despair makes the remark to Desire one page before Rose Walker is introduced in Gaiman, “The Doll’s House Part 1,” Doll’s House, 44.

  58 Gaiman, “Lost Hearts” Doll’s House, 225-227.

  59 Ibid.

  60 Ibid.

  61 Gaiman, “Men of Good Fortune,” Doll’s House, 132.

  62 Gaiman, “Façade,” Dream Country, 109.

  Gaiman: The Teller of Tales and the Fairy Tale Tradition

  Leslie Drury What is important is to tell the stories anew, and to retell the old stories.

  They are our stories, and they should be told.1

  Neil Gaiman’s work is rich with allusions and re-envisioning of familiar myths, folk and fairy stories, especially in his short fiction collections. The collection becomes less about the specific sources for the tales and more about their function as a group—where the transmission of the tales becomes central to their meaning. Gaiman’s stories tend to share certain elements as he digests and reworks these structures from fairy tales and folklore, oral tradition and literary pedigree: they form a new relationship between reader and tale as Gaiman presents the role as author as primarily that of the storyteller.

  The history of folklore and fairy tale in the western literary tradition lends itself to this type of exploration of meta-narrative issues.2 Given the genre’s roots in oral tradition, critical work on folk and fairy tales through the centuries indicates the importance of the interchange between teller, tale, and audience as a constantly evolving process that suits the needs of each new telling. As Marina Warner says, “For these are stories with staying power, as their antiquity shows, because the meanings they generate are themselves magical shape-shifters, dancing to the needs of their audience.”3 Many critics see the setting down of fixed literary versions of fairy tales as an ossifying process in which the move from oral forms to literary texts has altered the natural flexibility of the tales. However, Gaiman’s approach to fairy tale shows that the conversation between tale teller and audience can be an ongoing process, and he develops this understanding of the importance of the oral associations with fairy tale as they have evolved over time. He says,

  The stories that people had told each other to pass the long nights had become children’s tales. And there, many people obviously thought, they needed to stay.

  But they don’t stay there. I think it’s because most fairytales, honed over the years, work so very well. They feel right. Structurally, they can be simple, but the ornamentation, the act of retelling, is often where the magic occurs. Like any fo
rm of narrative that is primarily oral in transmission, it’s all in the way you tell ‘em.4

  In working with stories from the canon of classic fairy tales and folklore, Gaiman utilizes their familiarity and associations with social repetition in order to explore human experience, emotion, and sexuality through the act of tale telling. Fairy tales pervade much of Gaiman’s work, but in this essay I will be exploring a few specific adaptations from his short fictions that deal directly with familiar folk and fairy tales. The short story “Snow, Glass, Apples” and the poems “The White Road” and “Locks” show Gaiman utilizing familiar stories from the fairy tale tradition in a manner that self-consciously highlights their relationship to the act of storytelling as a creatively generative process.

  “Snow, Glass, Apples” The story “Snow, Glass, Apples”5 shows Gaiman reworking the “Snow White” tale into a recognizable but perverse version of itself. Most of the story elements from the original are present—the Princess follows her generic description, the Queen orders the girl’s heart cut out, the girl survives in the forest amongst dwarves, the poisoning by apple occurs, the prince finds the seeming dead Princess, she is revived, and the Queen is executed—but the way the reader perceives these events is dramatically altered. This effect is achieved in two key ways: through a decisive twist in the perspective of the story, by using the Queen as narrator, and, through this new narrative voice, reworking key motifs from the original tale. Both of these contribute to a version of events that is both profoundly familiar in the way that fairy tales often are and profoundly unsettling in the way it recasts the familiar material in a way that shows a very adult and very dark aspect of the story.