Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Neil Gaiman is in Singapore! I went to his talk yesterday. apparently, he was brought in by the bristish council. he's also making a movie, Mirrormask, and his new book Anasi Boys is coming out soon. The biggest suprise was the number of people that were there. i knew that loads of people were coming but i suprised by the number of screaming teenagers. it was weird since i was expecting cool-looking thirty year olds and literature professors.

Gaiman is one of the greatest writers of our time. The Straits Times' 'Life' section called him a literary rock star. His comic book series, The Sandman is said to by the greatest comic of all time. He has written screenplays and a number of books, including the bestseller 'American Gods' and 'Coraline'. He has also worked with Terry Pratchett to produce the book Good Omens.

however, the Sandman seems to be his greatest achievement to date. i dug up my old ISO essay on it.

well, here it is....



Neil Gaiman's The Sandman is an extremely popular award-winning series of graphic novels of the fantasy genre which began in 1989. It consists of ten installments which explore a magical world filled with horror and beauty. The anthropomorphic personifications created by Gaiman are Dream, Destiny, Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair and Destruction. Each character is represented by its function and its sphere of responsibility. They are all equally well-known among young comic book readers. However, Dream, or Morpheus, is the best developed of the personifications, followed closely by Death.
In Preludes and Nocturnes, a group of wizards use their power to build a prison to trap Death, therefore ending death. However, they capture Dream instead. When Dream finally escapes, he sets out on a quest to find the tools of his office, which are his ruby, pouch and helm. The quest teaches Dream a lesson about depending on mere tools as well as taking him through the deep recesses of hell itself where he meets Death.
It is worth noting that Gaiman's personification of death is a woman, who has her own sad story to tell in Dream Country. She is vulnerable and eager to share her story. She possesses a sympathetic nature with a quiet determination to help the downtrodden. One day in every century, Death takes on mortal flesh to better comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like and to taste mortality: This is the price she must pay for dividing the living from the past and the future.
Dream was a hard-hearted follower of rules, with more enemies than friends but, he evolves into a more compassionate being in the course of the series. In The Doll's House, Dream has to choose between mercy and responsibility when given the much sought after keys to hell.
"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." - Dream (8)
In World's End, all the personifications are drawn together in a tavern where they share their unique tales of wonder. The reader learns valuable lessons about the nature and power of conversations and the sharing of dreams and personal life stories. A strong bond is almost naturally forged between the reader and each of the human-like personifications. This is reinforced in The Wake, which is the final installment of The Sandman, where the reader becomes the mourner at the wake of close friends.
The Sandman series is a marvellous collection of anthropomorphic personifications with their own distinctive characteristics and voices. The variousPersonifications are able to do what mortal men cannot do but, they seem to share the same motivations as people such as pride, jealousy, duty and power. The gods and monsters of Gaiman's universe are dependent on the faith of flesh and blood humans for their fortunes and so, they reflect the essence of mortality and humanity. It is by and large an internally consistent schema that incorporates mythology and religion. The post-modern perception of these personifications lies in the fact that Gaiman is consistently self-deprecating and has his characters mock themselves by referring to each other as mere anthropomorphic personifications.