The Sandman ..... relating Graphic Novel Superheroes to Fertility

Okay, so most of you know that I am a librarian.  A lot of my job is purchasing materials for the library.  In a nutshell, each month we get a massive list of books to be published, and our job is to read reviews of these items, take into consideration our patrons and community, and make educated decisions about what we should add to our collection based on our budget.  So there is this genre of books called Graphic Novels that I am totally uneducated about.  Many of my coworkers read them and are extremely informed about them, but I am not.  So.... I decided to try my hand at the genre and test one out.  I asked for recommendations, and the The Sandman by Neil Gaiman won out by a landslide.

 At first glance, I was skeptical.  This book looks like a comic book with Monsters and Superheroes ..... not up my alley at all.  But I was committed, so I journeyed on.  Only a few pages into the book, I was sucked in by the story.  Once I realized that the main character was the personification of Dreams, I began to understand that there was real literary substance to this sparsely worded work.

I'M GETTING TO MY POINT, I PROMISE ......

In one part of the story Dream journeys to Hell.  In Hell, he must fight a demon for his helmet.  The fight consists of a shapeshifting contest in which one fighter's shape beats out the other's.  For example, the demon first turns into a Wolf.  Dream turns into a hunter who then kills the wolf and so on.  Nearing the end of the fight, the demon turns into Anti-Life thinking he has won the contest.  I mean, think about it.  Anti-Life is just the opposite of all things living, so how could anything beat that??  After a long pregnant pause, Dream comes out with simply, "I AM HOPE."  Brilliant!

This struck me right away as being perfectly suited to the contents of this blog.  I have constantly written about Hope and how it always returns no matter how desperate you are.  Nothing can kill Hope.  It lives despite us.  DREAM WINS!! :)  As if I weren't amazed enough at the depth of content I was reading in this seemingly shallow work (pft!).... the story goes on.  After Dream wins by becoming the unkillable and undestroyable Hope, the Devil tries to keep Dream in Hell by surrounding him with thousands of demons.  The Devil says, "What power do Dreams have in Hell?"  You think about it and say to yourself .... true.  Then Dream pipes up with another BRILLIANT observation, "What power does Hell have without Dreams?"  GENIUS!!!

So here's the point of this long rambling blog entry.  Dream is right.  Hell only has power over us because of the Dreams we have for ourselves.  We dream about growing up and getting married and having children and living happily ever after.  When one part of our dream does not come to fruition we create our own little version of Hell in which we dwell on the fact that our Dreams haven't come true.  I am by no means saying you should give up your Dreams; the exact opposite actually.  I am asking you to be aware that the very existence of that deep down, passionate, desire that you feel to your very core is what is making you feel pain at the moment.  So you must ask yourself this .....  what is more important:  to feel the pain of the living being who Wishes, Hopes, Desires, and Dreams... or to give up Hope and Dreams just to avoid pain?  I think you will agree that the Hopeless, Dreamless person may as well be dead.  Our Dreams are what light us!  We have all seen the bitter person who is angry at life and has no Dreams left.  Their light has gone out, and it is written all over them.  It is an effort to keep Dreaming when you are frustrated and disappointed.  But it is your choice.  Those who are lifeless have chosen to forgo the mild pain of not having something they dream of in favor of the numbness associated with no longer Dreaming at all.  The fact that you are feeling pain simply means that your spirit is alive and well and doing what spirits do:  Unconsciously invoking that which makes up the very light in us.  Keep dreaming and let the light that is you take your power back from the hell you are in.  Once you do that, your pain may remain but it's power over you eventually melts away and is assuaged by the Light of your Dreams.