Between Being and Belonging
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Between Being and Belonging: Home and Identity in The Graveyard Book represented through Image and Text Shonali Alm-Basu English Studies G2E, Bachelor 15 credits VT/2020 Supervisor: Jakob Dittmar Special Thanks: Björn Sundmark 1 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3 Part One ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Material and Layout ................................................................................................................... 8 Gaiman and the Graveyard ........................................................................................................ 8 Part Two: Home and Identity (Being and Belonging) ............................................................. 13 Home .................................................................................................................................... 13 Identity ................................................................................................................................. 16 Part Three: Adaptation and Form ............................................................................................ 17 Part Four: McKean and Riddell ............................................................................................... 23 Part Five ................................................................................................................................... 34 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 34 Works Cited: ............................................................................................................................ 38 Secondary Works ..................................................................................................................... 39 2 Abstract This project aims to investigate the interplay and function of visual and textual narrative working together to expand and express a story. It will specifically analyze The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and its accompanying illustrations provided by Chris Riddell and Dave McKean. This investigation will also consider the roles of identity and home, and their impact on the narrative as they are developed in the interplay of images and text. Analysis focused on the aspects of adaptation, form, and the concept of thirdspace will extend and expand the investigation further and raise questions for new research on the subject. 3 Introduction Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book straddles many differing fields of narrative expression. Firstly, Gaiman himself was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Gaiman re-imagined the over-arching features of The Jungle Book into his own work with The Graveyard Book. In turn, Dave McKean and Chris Riddell each tried their respective hands at adapting Gaiman’s text with illustration for two separate editions. Each artist interpreted the narrative differently, adapting different plot points, but both still managed to evoke a sense of congruency with the text itself. This novel has also been adapted into a two-volume graphic novel by P. Craig Russel and eight other creative minds; however, this project does not intend to analyze these graphic novel renditions in detail. Using the framework of image and text, this BA paper will seek to identify specific notions evident in the narrative that are transferrable throughout each adaptation of Gaiman’s text. This includes but is not limited to: Studying the character and function of the protagonist, Nobody Owens, chronologically from his origin to his exeunt from the graveyard, but also conceptually, as an entity potentially inhabiting two worlds, within and/or between these worlds. In regard to these worlds, we will investigate how the landscape of the graveyard is presented visually and textually in The Graveyard Book. We will also analyze the conceptualization of home and refuge for Nobody Owens as a recognizable structure within the narrative. This particular portion of analysis will build on the previous works of Marcello Giovanelli and Edward Soja. The investigation of this space will work in conjunction with the function of Nobody Owens as a narrative Form as per Caroline Levine and will also be compared with Kipling’s portrayal of Mowgli in The Jungle Book and as potential Thirdspace by Edward Soja. More specifically, we will also further investigate the graveyard as home and how we might define the graveyard as home to Nobody Owens. Returning to characterization, 4 Nobody Owens as a maturing protagonist will be identified both visually and textually. Bod, as he is known to his community, grows into his identity. He matures, visually and textually as the narrative progresses, gradually raising questions of belonging as a living being to a place that is dedicated to the dead and being alive in it, but still belonging to that very place. It can be argued that the graveyard has become a “thirdspace” as defined by Edward Soja, and that Bod adjusts in his “form” to adhere to the structure of the graveyard. Bod’s character changes when interacting with social communities, alive, dead, or somewhere in-between, further complicating the question of belonging. A detailed investigation of the relationship between the ghost of Liza Hempstock and Bod will concretize the different subversions of form, both visual and textual, instigated by the two illustrators, and of course, Neil Gaiman’s text first. The final portion of this project will aim to exemplify the necessity of valuing narratives that draw attention to a deeper cognitive apprehension of children’s literature, or rather, narratives that are intended for children. Many researchers have worked with this text previously, engaging a wide variety of theories and analyses, amounting to a great number of source materials for this BA project to draw from. This project is divided into five parts and will aim to utilize some of these previous works alongside the project’s own analysis. The U.S. version of the novel is illustrated by Dave McKean, while the U.K. version is illustrated by Chris Riddell, both published in the same year, 2008. The aim of this BA project is to examine the nature of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and its adapted illustrative forms, using a variety of methods. To investigate the setting of home and landscape in this novel, this project will utilize the methods of Caroline Levine’s work on Forms and Edward Soja’s work on Thirdspace. To better understand the character of Nobody 5 Owens, a combination of studies of illustration and visual representation (Hayley Campbell, Alison Halsall, E.H. Gombrich and Renata Dalmaso) will be used to analyze characterization through image and text. This project will also employ the works of Björn Sundmark’s Metacognition (2018), Marcello Giovanelli’s investigation of child readers and home (2016), and Maria Triscuizzi’s work on Visual Narrative (2017). These works, along with others included in the bibliography, will be used to understand and identify how The Graveyard Book can be understood in children’s literature by readers of every age. The Graveyard Book in its many reiterations retains the quality of telling a knowable, recognizable story. But if we look a little deeper, it will be found that it is actually a combination of components that make the text the stable element of the story. For example, the novel plays on features such as recognizability, in the sense that specific elements of the story are not new to the audience, even if the overall narrative is dressed up in a new way. The theme of a child raised or sheltered by unknown forces in a seemingly feral landscape is a storyline commonly found in children’s literature. To many fans of Gaiman’s work, The Graveyard Book is also in keeping with the themes of his other spooky works intended for children. This being said, there is certainly a unique choice to decide to write a children’s book full of dead people. But this was not Gaiman’s original intent with the narrative. In an interview with Roger Sutton, Gaiman himself tells how, “The Graveyard Book was begun many years before those titles, not as a children's book, not as an adult book, but as simply a first page inspired by his son pedaling a tricycle through a cemetery near the family's then- home in England” (2). Long before The Jungle Book inspired the framework for the story, it was Gaiman’s children that kept his writing going. Not until later did Gaiman consider the framework of The Jungle Book: “And then I thought, you know you could write something 6 like The Jungle Book and set it in a graveyard. And it was just this lovely little nice clean thought. And then I thought you'd call it The Graveyard Book. And you'd have dead people bringing him up, and probably in the Bagheera role I'd have a vampire and maybe a werewolf as Baloo. And it just sort of clicked. It felt right” (3). After many years of stopping and starting and waiting “to see if he was good enough yet” (240) Gaiman tried again to write but this time he started when Nobody Owens is eight years old rather than a baby. However, now that the book is here and has been reimagined so many times, we cannot look at the text in isolation. As