This graphic novel is the fantastical account about how
Dream (a personified deity-like entity who rules the world of sleep) is
captured by a magician in 1916 and held until 1988 when he finally
escapes. The magician originally wanted
immortality by capturing Death (Dream’s sister, another one of the “endless”
entities), but unwittingly trapped Dream instead. This throws the whole would into disarray,
because there is no force to give people dreams and govern normal sleep. General insanity ensues.
Dream finally escapes from his container when the guards
fail to keep watch. He attempts to
return to his dream-kingdom, but he finds that he is very weak, because he is
missing his three magical items: a pouch of sand, a Helm, and a ruby amulet. He seeks out the Three Witches (who are
really one entity with three aspects), who offer him some clues about where to
find his lost items. First, Dream goes
to London and gets help from John Constantine to recover the pouch. Second, Dream goes to hell and has to
outsmart a demon that has his helm. And
finally, Dream has to battle an absolutely crazed foe named Dee who has stolen
his ruby. Dream tricks Dee into
shattering the amulet, and he thus regains his power.
Following this, Dream restores the natural order of dreams
and sleep for humans, and even forgives Dee for attempting to kill him with his
own ruby. In the end, Dream meets with
his sister Death, and follows her around for a while observing what she does,
which is to carry the dead away.
This graphic novel is extremely disorienting, because it doesn’t
give any background information whatsoever.
It feels like you are simply thrown into an extremely intricate world
with its own characters, features, laws, etc.
But this reflects the content of the story itself, I think. When Dream is captured, people stop sleeping and dreaming normally, which causes pervasive confusion and even insanity. The images on the pages themselves reflect
this feeling. Sometimes it is difficult
to decide which part of the page to read first, because the boxes are slanted
and positioned in abnormal ways.
But ultimately, for me, this greatly enhanced my personal experience
with the book. It allowed me to make
decisions about what to look at and what to read first. It really doesn’t matter which order you take
the story in as long as you get to it at some point. I enjoy the non-linear story telling. The world is also so deep, dark and magical,
which really appeals to my own aesthetic preferences. And there are multiple allusions to other
comics I read as a kid, so I think that added meaning that wouldn’t otherwise
be picked up on (e.g. John Constantine makes and appearance, and one major
section of the book is located in Arkham Asylum).
I would never attempt to use this as a general text to teach
from for an entire class, but I would keep it on my shelf at school, so that an
interested student could check it out and read it on their own. I’m convinced that this graphic novel is
doing a number of highly interesting things with the mixture between text,
content and images. They are
inseparable. So, perhaps this would be
an exemplar text for “reading,” in the full sense of reading, a complex piece
of art. Aside from this, I think that
the central themes of dreams, insanity, demons, hell, heroes, magic, death,
etc., are naturally interesting to adolescents.
Since this graphic novel is riddled with these ideas, it would make for
a wonderfully engaging read for a high school (and maybe middle school)
student.
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