Comics in academia: Death, Dreaming, and Sandman

In Sandman, Neil Gaiman challenges cultural conceptions of death and dreaming by creating characters that subvert notions of death as something to be feared and dreaming as pleasant and happy. The narrative in Preludes and Nocturnes supports the idea that dreams are a dangerous realm, whereas death is a gift, and Gaiman uses the characters Dream and Death to show this throughout the text.

The functions of Dream and Death support the idea that the Dreamworld is a dangerous realm. Where Death has a seemingly singular function throughout “The Sound of Her Wings,” Dream’s function is somewhat more difficult to define.

Gaiman subverts traditional characterizations of death-bringing characters as cruel and ruthless with his portrayal of Death as one of the Endless. Death is mentioned in “Sleep of the Just,” the first chapter of Preludes and Nocturnes, because a human named Roderick Burgess is attempting to summon and trap her and winds up trapping Dream instead. After Dream escapes, he tells Alex Roderick, “You wanted Death? Then count yourself lucky for the sake of your species and your petty planet that you did not succeed…” (Gaiman “Sleep of the Just” 37). This seems to suggest that Dream is the kinder, or at least the less powerful of the two, which sets up a somewhat ominous characterization of Gaiman’s death. However, when she is introduced in “The Sound of Her Wings,” Death is seemingly a happy, kind character. Through the story told in this chapter, the reader learns that her function as an Endless is not to kill people, but to meet them when they die and escort them to the afterlife. Though “The Sound of Her Wings” may not show the full scope of Death’s power, her function seems to be clear.

Dream’s function as an Endless is less clear. He has many names: Morpheus, Lord of the Dreamland, and Prince of Stories, which hint at the different ways in which he functions. Preludes and Nocturnes delves into some of Dream’s powers. Unlike Death, his function is not straightforward, but it and his powers are revealed over the course of the narrative. In “The Sound of Her Wings,” Death tells Dream, “Mostly they aren’t too keen to see me. They fear the Sunless Lands. But they enter your realm every night without fear,” to which Dream replies, “And I am far more terrible than you, my sister” (Gaiman “The Sound of Her Wings” 17).

The rest of the text supports this idea of Dream’s realm as dangerous, and Gaiman does this by incorporating elements of horror into the story. In Clive Barker’s introduction to The Doll’s House, he introduces two kinds of horror, the first in which alien creatures live among humans, and the second in which “The whole world is haunted and mysterious. There is no solid status quo, only a series of relative realities, personal to each of the characters, any or all of which are frail, and subject to eruptions from other states and conditions” (Barker “Introduction”).

This is something that is emphasized many times over in Preludes and Nocturnes. At first, Dream is portrayed as a somewhat weak character. He is summoned by Roderick Burgess, trapped, and stripped of his powers. The first hint at Dream’s real power comes at his escape. At the slightest break in the circle that keeps Dream imprisoned, he is able to use his guards’ daydreams to gain some leverage and trick them into helping him escape. Dream punishes Alex Burgess with eternal waking, which is depicted as an endless string of nightmares. In this chapter, it is established that Dream gains power from dreams, but also has some control of how people dream. The horror element here is the seriousness of the punishment and, though it is only the beginning, the power Dream has wielded even in his weakened state.

Dream further establishes his powers when he seeks his tools in “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Obtaining his sand seems to be the least difficult part of Dream’s quest, but it does reveal another danger of Dream’s realm. Rachel has been using the sand as a drug, and while it has destroyed her body and mind, it has prolonged her life, and she exists in a constantly addled, addicted state. By the time Dream reaches her, she can no longer survive without the sand.

The second part of the quest, the retrieval of Dream’s helm, serves to build on Dream’s character. The game he plays with Choronzon in “A Hope in Hell” is a strategy game of one-upmanship, and this and his consequent escape from Hell extend the possibility of Dream’s power. Though Lucifer attempts to imprison Dream because he lacks power in Hell, but Dream says that without dreaming, Hell has no meaning. Hell only has power if its occupants can dream of Heaven. More of Dream’s reality is revealed in this chapter, and with it, more of his power. While not especially horrific, Gaiman sets up the search for the ruby, the last of the tools, and demonstrates that Dream has power anywhere dreams might exist in some form. Doctor Destiny attempts to kill Dream in “Sound and Fury” by destroying the ruby and instead returns Dream’s power to him, giving him full control of the Dreamworld once again. Immediately, people begin to dream normally. In this chapter, Dream’s “relative reality” is a lack of reality: Anything outside of a human reality belongs to Dream, and the scope of this ability and control could be considered an element of Barker’s second type of horror. Regaining the power from his ruby shows that Preludes and Nocturnes is only the beginning of his ability.

Dream’s function as one of the Endless is hard to pin down because of its evidently large scope, and this, along with Dream’s actions, supports the idea that the Dreamworld is a more terrifying realm than death. To Dream and Death, death is a gift because it is necessary to life. Dreaming can encompass any number of things, including nightmares that threaten reality. Though culturally held beliefs often portray death as something to be feared, Gaiman challenges this, using the narrative in Sandman to support the idea that death is an inevitable but natural part of life. Instead, Gaiman also subverts the conception of dreaming as purely unconscious, and uses the narrative to show a more dangerous side of dreaming.

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