Be aware – if you are popping in on this post and not participating in the re-read, there are major spoilers to follow! Also, you should totally participate in the re-read.
So, who died?
Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?
Then, what died? Who are you mourning?
A puh-point of view.
And in the pages that follow, what we get as readers are several points of view about our departed Dream king. What is he like? Well, as has been stated before in the series as well as in these posts, that all depends on who’s looking. Or, in this case, who’s speaking. To Delirium, he was a slightly scary big brother. To Bast, he was someone who made her happy, with whom she could flirt and feel at ease. To Thessaly, he was as infuriating as he was captivating. Calliope loved him once, but finds herself now in that place we all know, in which former lovers seem like little more than strangers to us, be they benevolent or otherwise. Matthew knew him as a good boss and occasional friend. It is his perspective that makes me the most sad in this story.
We barely see Morpheus in this collection, and only his outline under the cerements in the chapters covering the wake. He never gets to speak for himself, except perhaps when Daniel is speaking. Or, I should say when the Dream King is speaking. Truthfully, Dream never did do much speaking for himself anyway. We have always had to know him far more through his actions and the reactions of those around him than his own exposition.
Still, some questions get answers of a sort in this collection. These answers, of course, only lead to more questions.
Plus there's the fact that he's, you know, all white instead of all black. I'd suspect there's some symbolism here.
1. We know a bit about what happened to Daniel. His mortality burned away, his immortality transformed. We know that this new perspective of Dream is different in some ways that may very well come from that bit of human immortality in his system. Morpheus had certainly changed enough to surprise those around him from time to time, and had learned to put away his pride when it lead him to act in ways he considered unjust (i.e. freeing Nada, visiting Orpheus). Daniel-Dream seems to embody these changes naturally, rather than struggle with them. He is more tactile than Morpheus – scratching the hippogryph under the chin while talking to his palace guards, hugging Lyta close as he offers her protection. I get the feeling this Dream will be an easier anthropomorphic personification to know than our old Morpheus. Of course, that’s pure speculation, as we don’t get to know him any better from here on out.
What do you think? Is he nicer? Will he, unlike Morpheus, be able to have a long and happy relationship with a woman? I sense this Dream may be better able to fall in love. Or perhaps he won’t even be interested in such a thing. None of the other Endless seem to be. Why is that, do you think?
2. While it is hard for me to believe I didn’t know this for sure long before this point the first time I read the series, we do get the final confirmation that Thessaly was in fact the lady love who sent Dream into such a funk at the beginning of Brief Lives. Reading The Kindly Ones, I realize it is all but spelled out for us there, but I do remember that the first time I read the series, it wasn’t until The Wake that I made the connection. It’s interesting. I used to hate Thessaly so much. I feel for her a bit this time. Maybe it’s another change based more on my own life experiences than anything else. She and Dream are similar in that they are hard to know – cold even- to outsiders. Is she feeling real pain here, if not remorse? Is she less a villain now? What’s next for Thessaly, I wonder?
3. If we are to believe Lucien, we must believe that yes indeed, Dream played an active and deliberate role in his own demise. The implication is that free will exists and he used his to get to this point. There’s still plenty of questions about how conscious all of it was, however – he is the embodiment of the unconscious after all. Or am I jumping to too many conclusions based on that one little remark? Something tells me we could debate the role of free will in this series endlessly – and I bet Neil Gaiman could do the same. It seems to be a concept he loves to explore.
4. Small things are wrapped up too – Gilbert decides to move on, Matthew decides to stay. Lyta gets a new life. Cluracan a new adventure, as his nemesis shows up (does anyone else think this nemesis is a much nicer guy than Cluracan? He reminds me of Daniel in that he seems to be a softer version of the original). Hob Gadling decides to go on living for a bit. It’s not surprising, really. Dream had to die to change, but Hob clearly has managed to do it without such drastic measures. His guilt about his old days as a slave ship captain draw a fine point on it. We get the origins story for The Tempest as well. And a small wink and nod from Destruction – and perhaps a bit of an ominous one at that “I wouldn’t be surprised at all” he tells Daniel, about the prospects of meeting again – I love that bit.
Generally speaking, I wouldn’t say I’m girly-girl. I’m learning to pay more attention to my wardrobe as I get older, especially hand bags and shoes (this is thanks in no small part to Bex, who has always had a great sense of style), and I admit to squealing like a girl when I see a puppy. I’m still not a hugger, though. Being excited and bubbly and stuff doesn’t come naturally to me, nor does opening up and being vulnerable and emotional.
I cry my way through books and movies, though. No doubt about that. So, no surprise, I teared up about a dozen times while reading The Wake.
Here are a few examples. I’m really hoping you’ll share yours too. Misery loves company and all.
1. When Lucien stops Cain from killing Able. “Cain. Not today.”
2. When Matthew eulogizes Morpheus.
3. When Matthew agrees to stay on with Daniel
4. The moment after we see Daniel discussing how he has changed with his guards, Destruction can be seen emerging from the distance. Chills, I tell you. Chills! That entire section had me a little watery-eyed, not because it was sad but because it was just so cool. Destruction is what allowed for (forced?) Dream to evolve into something new. I hate that it meant the end of an old friend, but I love that it happened nonetheless.
5. The creation and naming of Eblis O’Shaughnessy. There’s something touching about that, especially the inclusion in Destiny’s speech of the fact that the man will neither be able to dream or destroy in his short life.
6. Orpheus, standing on a dock somewhere in time and space, watching his father’s “body” go by. Oy. that gets me every time.
7. Seeing Morpheus’ shape emerge under the cerements laid out by Eblis O’Shaughnessy. It’s all we get to see of him during the wake proper and it makes me sad.
I find myself less morose at the end of The Wake as I did at the end of The Kindly Ones, or even Worlds’ End. Like I have said before, the trauma is largely over at this point, and it is clear that life will progress without Morpheus. Plenty of folks we loved will keep living out their stories, and the ones who do not seem to have found peace. It is amazing to me, having been to funerals, having survived losses, how this book captures the feel of death so well. It is a bittersweet happening in our lives. When Gaiman says of Death’s speech “She gives you peace. She gives you meaning,” he isn’t just talking about her words, is he?
And here ends our re-read…sort of. I have heard from some of you that you have fallen behind, but know that we are always here, always ready to read what you have to say as you catch up. Take your time. Enjoy the journey. Then, if you’re like us, go back and enjoy it again.
-Proffitt
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The Wake
As usual, Neil is a genius. A wake is the vigil one keeps over the dead body, part of the funeral procedure. But what does one do after a night’s dreaming? One wakes, of course! And that is just what all of us do at the end of The Wake proper.
Funerals are not really for the dead, but for the living; to help them cope with being left behind. Several times, Neil’s narrator explains that we are all here, because we all dream and are therefore there at the funeral and wake. Why do we not remember it? Well, do you remember all of your dreams?
Here again we have the evidence of mysterious forces encompassing the affairs of the Endless. Who sends these birds to beings as powerful as the Endless? What is the voice that control the funeral chamber for the Endless is the necropolis Litharge?
Notice that Delirium seems much more on the ball here, even more than Despair. After all, although she is the youngest of the Endless, the current Despair is actually younger than she is.
And what a strange life Eblis O’Shaughnessy (or as I like to call him, Plippy Ploppy Cheese Nose) must have! What is he to do when the funeral is over? Being that Dream is “dead” when he is created, he cannot dream, and since Destruction did not contribute to his making, he cannot ultimately destroy.
I take it the book of ceremony and the cerecloth are only for Dream; certainly the cloth has his symbol on it; his helmet, an adapted form of the gas mask of the superhero Sandman. Later on, it says that we all file into the building without volition, as if it were all pre-written, but in which book? In the book of Destiny, where almost everything is pre-written, or on the book of ceremony brought out by Eblis?
And Matthew truly loved his boss and is hurting, to the point of ending it all. Notice that he says “Don’t pity me,” just as Orpheus did so long ago, when he had lost Eurydice.
Notice also that this is a day of exceptions. Today of all days, Cain will not murder his brother. Today of all days, Death does not dress in black.
We see a limited number of Dream’s lovers. Calliope tells their love story from her point of view, and how sad and poignant it is; if only Dream could have grown up faster, that could have been a good marriage. Titania is very cagey; probably something happened, but we are not to know. We already know as much about Nala as we will know, and we are told no more details about his relationship with Alienor.
Then Thessaly tells her tale. Certainly Dream and even Thessaly (so many centuries younger as she is) must have known how wrong they were for each other; but for a while they were happy. But when the bloom comes off, she is mad at herself and tells herself she never loved him; and yet she is not being quite honest with herself. She tells him she doesn’t love him, and then she is mad that he doesn’t fight for her; and she says she would never shed another tear for him (which implies she has already shed some) and she is indeed crying. Also, in the events of The Kindly Ones, she was trying to hurt him (and not to kill him) but when he dies, she clearly regrets her part in his destruction.
The conversations between Nuala, the Cluracan and his nemesis reminds me of personal history. A long time ago, Neil went onto a cyber-forum on Compuserve and I was there. He was trying to promote Neverwhere, which I had not yet read, so I asked him how the Nemesis could remove the glamor, since only the one who put it on could remove it. Well you can see how the Nemesis resembles the Cluracan. Neil said that for these purposes, the Nemesis was close enough to the Cluracan to be able to remove the glamor; he is something of a dark shadow, a part of oneself that tries to destroy oneself.
As I understand it, Neil says he is The Cluracan, a title and not really a name. It is a generic, like leprechaun, which is linguistically related; but there is only one Cluracan in the Sandman stories, so he is The Cluracan. The legendary cluracan is marked by overindulgence in alcohol, as this one is.
Recently Neil put on his blog how he THOUGHT he understood the US from all the media he knew about it, and how wrong he was before he moved here. This is a case in point: Superman tells Batman and the Martian Manhunter how he dreams of being a newsreader. Well, the more recent incarnations of Clark Kent have been newsreaders; what we would call news anchors. “Newsreader” is a British usage; perfectly reasonable, but not how Americans would talk.
There’s also the part where Superman says he dreams he’s an actor in a strange TV program of his life. Batman says, “Don’t everyone?”. And Martian Manhunter says, “I don’t.” because he’s never had enough clout to have a TV show just for him!
Apparently, as usual, there are rules that somehow appear, as Matthew would say. He, as a friend, is permitted, not required, to speak. As a member of the family, Delirium must say something, and so must the least friendly sibling, Desire. The only one excused is Destruction, since he has resigned in a way.
Daniel/Dream is starting his career in a fine way. He has recreated or restored most of his friends, and he is demonstrating forgiveness and feeling in a way his predecessor would have found difficult. His interview with his mother is very touching. She poured all her love into him, and into the vengeance for him that she had promised for him and for Hector; but he was so transformed by assuming the mantle of Dream that he almost feels compelled to punish her for her misconceived acts. But he forgives her, and marks her like Cain so she will not be harmed. In a similar way, he forbears to do anything more to Alexander Burgess.
When he wakes up, Paul has returned from the funeral of Jack. I believe I read that it was Jack Holdaway, who committed suicide from the fallout from his ill-considered affair with Rose. But Alex FEELS forgiven, and Jack will live on in his child. There is death, and there is new life.
And we wake.
Sunday Mourning
Hob Gadling has taken up with a black lover, and feels the need to apologize for his slave-trading so manner years ago. He remembers the dream of Morpheus’ funeral, but he doesn’t know whether it was a true dream or not. He can’t reconcile himself to the Renaissance Fair; it’s not enough like the past he remembers.
And Death appears to him, to tell him about Dream and to ask if he wants to end it all. Maybe just after Audrey died he would, but he is with Gwen now, and again, he’s not ready.
Here I’m remembering his last words to Dream. He said,”I worry. You take care of yourself.” Dream smiled mysteriously and said,”Thank you, Hob. I shall.” But did he mean that he would take care of himself by ending himself?
At the end, Hob is vouchsafed a dream of his pal and also Destruction. In my experience, dreams of dead loved ones end as soon as you recognize that they are dead, but that doesn’t happen in this case and Hob is left with a last good memory of his friend.
Exiles
I am of Chinese descent, so this story meant a lot to me. Neil has done his research; almost everything about this story rings true to me.
Over many centuries, White Lotus was the name of a secret society of revolutionaries in China. First against the Mongols and later against the Manchurians, they claimed magical powers and fought against emperors and established authority.
As the son of a scholar, Master Li’s son studied this magic and learned some, but it was not enough power to save his life.
This story clearly follows “Soft Places”, the story of Marco Polo entering the Central Asian desert where time and space are vague and fluctuating. So Master Li first encounters Dream/Morpheus and in short order Dream/Daniel. It is interesting and poignant that Dream/Morpheus and Li discuss a Chinese story of a man who lost his son, when both of them had each also lost their son. Here too, there is a cat, as there have often been in this series.
Master Li is so clever that he was able to get a bridge out of the arcade machine, the machine that was carefully designed so that it is almost impossible to get what you want out of it.
Dream/Daniel finally ends the wanderings of the lost horsemen. He retains the memory of Dream/Morpheus’ imprisonment by the Burgesses. And he again mentions the idea of us knowing everything but managing to forget we what we know. He offers Li an honored place by his side in the Dreaming, but similar to Socrates, Li says that he has received much from his emperor and he will receive his punishment as well.
And the word of hope is that nothing is truly lost.
The Tempest
This tale of Shakespeare is informed by research as good as we have it; naturally, the interpretations are Neil’s own, and made to support his story.
There is no real confirmation that Shakespeare helped with the King James Bible, but it remains a quite possible and intriguing idea. In particular, if one counts the 46th word from the beginning in Psalm 46 one gets “shake” and the 46th word from the end is “spear”, so either he wrote it himself, or possible the translators knew of him and gave him that tribute. At least it’s a colorful story.
You notice that both Master Li and Shakespeare go to Dream for a remembered glass of wine.
Things are coming full circle here. On the way to Dream’s castle, Shakespeare hears the sound of mighty wings, as in “The Sound of Her Wings” from Preludes and Nocturnes. There we see the previous incarnation of Merv Pumpkinhead, Merv Turniphead, since Pumpkins have not yet arrived from the New World, and they used to do many things we now do with pumpkins with turnips then.
Shakespeare is wondering whether the bargain was a good one now. Many years ago, Dream himself wondered whether it was good, since “the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted,” as Dream tells Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Dream Country. And for all his power and age, Dream does not really know whether it was good, or what the alternate history would have been had Shakespeare not accepted the offer.
Shakespeare discusses the hazards of a creative life, which may have been part of the price of his bargain; the fact that “real” life doesn’t seem so real, and one seems abstracted from one’s real family and friends. No doubt Neil has felt the price at times himself, as did the late Isaac Asimov to my knowledge, and likely many more.
Neil loves to show the ironies of attempting to predict the future. Augustus felt that his August would soon be supplanted by a month named Tiberius; he was wrong about that. Shakespeare thought that the Guy Fawkes rhyme that he and Ben Jonson came up with would live a hundred years; but it has lasted to the present day. Shakespeare thought Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus would be remembered forever; and it has not yet been forgotten, but I am not sure how much longer it will be so.
And now we come to the nub of things. Why did Dream want Shakespeare to write The Tempest? He felt he had no story and he felt he was not a man. But what is this Sandman series but his story, and in the end, did he not become a man, in a manner of speaking?
As Neil was writing The Wake, his good friend and influence Roger Zelazny died. Neil, like all of us, doesn’t want to say goodbye, but there comes a time when we must.