Topics in Literature: The
Literary Gothic
The Sandman
In the graphic novel, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, the creepiest visual was the scene in “Dream a Little Dream of Me”. The scene was when Constantine and Dream found Rachel and Dream’s bag of sand, and her decaying and dying body. This was so creepy because here was a naked women who was moderately young, literally decaying before their eyes. She was dying because of the dreams. Constantine already had lost the women he loved but now he was witnessing her die painfully. It’s hard to watch someone they love die, especially in this horrible way. The creepiest idea developed in this chapter was the idea that Rachel was stuck in her dreams/nightmares and because it’s so unhealthy to always dream it was the cause of her death. Typically people think of dreams as a way to work through what your subconscious thoughts and to resolve our conflicts. According to our class lecture, Freud said that “dreams are unconscious and its the realm of repressed desires”. The complete opposite is happening in this chapter. When reading a graphic novel, especially a gothic novel, it’s almost easier to see how the story is actually gothic. You can visually see decaying buildings and bodies, you see the night time, you see the character’s struggle and emotions. It makes it easier to understand, knowing the typical gothic tropes, and visually seeing while reading. It takes away a bit of the readers imagination but it provides something in its place. This story is more than just horror. As mentioned earlier it shows the readers the gothic tropes. In “Dream a Little Dream of Me” you see human guts all over the wall, you see death and decay, you see the death of a loved one, you see the night time, you see Dream’s creepy not humanlike eyes, you see insane mentality. You get that eerie and mysterious feeling that gothic stories are supposed to evoke. There are many elements of horror but its combined with the right gothic tropes to make it beyond a horror story.
October 28, 2013