The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman

by Burke, Jessica

  Just as the character Satan is met in Lilith, throughout The Sandman series, the Dream king and his siblings have multiple encounters with Lucifer Morningstar. Since the Bible describes Lucifer as a fallen angel, this series presents him not as the goat-footed, horned-headed, tail wagging demon that is often used to represent him. Instead, this Lucifer, when first met, is shown dressed as a traditional angel: a gown and big wings. In Miltonian fashion, this Lucifer rules over hell, but he has the option of leaving it. He uses his power to set the prisoners of hell free. The result of this, ironically, shows a possible need for a concept of hell: all of the scary things need to be kept somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone outside of their own realm.

  Intriguingly, in both stories, the power of hell is pitted against the power of dreams. The Sandman, at one point, is confronted by Lucifer. Lucifer challenges the idea that dreams have any power in hell. His response is that if those who lived in hell could not dream of heaven, then hell would lose its power.26 In Lilith, however, in “the region of the seven dimensions,” dreaming is also important: people are brought here to lie down and go to sleep, in order to dream until the time of their own awakening. Those who, like the arguing skeletons Mr. Vane listens to, have brought hell with them cannot lay down to dream. They must first become human again.27

  Just as Lucifer makes his appearance in both Gaiman’s The Sandman series and in MacDonald’s Lilith, other characters from the Judeo-Christian story of the Creation and Fall play important roles in a world other than our own. In The Sandman, this occurs in the land ruled by the Sandman, Dream. This place is inhabited not only by the creatures that occur in the dreams that people have at night, but also of the stories that people tell to each other. In Lilith, it is the region of seven dimensions. Placing these characters in alternate worlds assists the reader in viewing these old, familiar characters, and thus, old, familiar concepts, differently. In Lilith, this is expressed directly to Mr. Vane as he is told, “You cannot understand your own world until you have visited another.”28 Not only are old familiar characters shown in a new light when they have been placed in a different world, but new characters can easily be added who, in their turn, help the reader think differently about what they are encountering.

  In both of these alternate worlds, the Adam and Eve story is presented in close association with a librarian who is also a raven. Their shared use of this striking image places Gaiman and MacDonald not only in dialogue with texts that present images of hell, but also in dialogue with each other. While neither ravens nor librarians occur in the Adam and Eve story, both of these raven/librarian characters play an important role in the text in which they occur. This role, in both cases, directly relates to the mythological significance of the raven, as well as the typical role of the librarian.

  Ravens, while not appearing in the story of Adam and Eve, do play a significant role throughout mythology. For example, in Haida and Tlingit (Native American tribes found in the northern west coast) mythology, Raven created the world.29 More importantly, in many cultures, ravens are closely associated with death. Deities who frequent battlefields such as the Morrígan or Odin are often accompanied by ravens, who will, in turn, devour the dead flesh of fallen warriors. In The Prose Edda, Odin is even called “The Raven God” because of his two ravens, Huggin and Munnin, “thought” and “memory.”

  The names of these two ravens suggest exactly why scavengers of the battlefield are also, in the fiction of both George MacDonald and Neil Gaiman, librarians. Libraries, of course, hold books, and books, in turn, are traditionally items in which history is stored and ideas are explained. In other words, libraries store memory and thought, and librarians are the guardians and caretakers of these items.

  The libraries these ravens have charge of are in huge, old homes, and include some unusual books. Gaiman’s library exists in Dream’s home, while MacDonald’s library sits in an old home that holds a tenuous relationship to the real world. Gaiman’s librarian, Lucien, has charge over every book that was never written. Some of these are books that people dreamed about writing but never wrote, while others are books that people began to write, but never finished.30

  As Dream’s librarian, Lucien is on friendlier terms with the Sandman than many others, and is often seen chatting with Dream’s raven, whose name is Matthew. Later in the series, however, Matthew discovers that he is not Dream’s first raven. In The Kindly Ones, the tenth volume of the Sandmanseries, Matthew learns that Dream has had ravens before him. Understandably concerned, the bird asks what happened to them. Dream responds by saying that Lucien the librarian, a friend of Matthew’s, is “the first raven of them all.”31 Dream’s librarian, then, is none other than the first winged death-symbol. His familiarity with death becomes obvious when Death arrives at Dream’s home on business, and Lucian offers to find her a book she might like to read.32

  In the first chapter of Lilith, the reader is informed that the old home in which the story takes place is haunted by the ghost of a librarian, a man named Mr. Raven. According to local legend, Mr. Raven’s library consisted “not of such books only as were wholesome for men to read, but of strange, forbidden, and evil books.”33 Like Lucien, he has charge of an unusual library. While Lucien used to be a raven and is now a humanlooking librarian, at times Mr. Raven appears as quite literally, a raven. At other times, however, he takes on a distinctly different appearance: “he was no longer a raven, but a man of middle height with a stoop, very thin, and wearing [sic] a long black tail coat.”34 Later, while discussing Mr. Raven’s role, Mr. Vane calls Mr. Raven not only a librarian, but “the sexton of all he surveyed.”35

  While the librarian is a non-canonical addition to both stories, more traditional Judeo-Christian characters show up as well. As the prime actors (aside from God himself ) in the Genesis story, the characters Adam and Eve must be discussed together. In The Sandman, Cain and Abel frequently show up, as do Eve and Lilith, who while not strictly canonical herself, entered the Jewish story through Assyrian mythology.36 Adam, however, only appears in a story that Eve tells to a baby named Daniel and the raven Matthew. This audience is significant: the story of how sin entered the world is told to a young child at the beginning of his life, and a raven, a symbol of death. Eve tells these two a story of how Adam had not one, but three wives: Lilith, who desired domination during intimate moments and was therefore kicked out of the Garden of Eden alone; a second wife, who never had a name but who disgusted Adam because of how she was made; and Eve, the woman who is telling the story. Eve does not tell the child and bird what happened to Adam, but she does explain what she knows of the fate of the three women. Lilith “gave birth to the Lilim, the children of Lilith, who have haunted the nights of the sons of Adam ever since.” The second wife was either forgotten or destroyed by her creator, while the third, Eve, “lived to be older than any woman, who in the end did not die, but who retreated to her cave. Blamed for sin. For misery. For the Fall.”37

  In The Sandman, Eve tells the story of Adam, Eve, and Lilith while visiting the house shared by the brothers Cain and Abel. During this visit, Eve denies that Cain is her son, and when he counters by declaring “you’re everybody’s mother,” she responds, “that is a matter of opinion.”38 This Eve willingly admits that she is the one blamed for all sin, sorrow, and sadness, but refuses the one bit of honor that religious traditions leave to her: she will not let herself be called the Mother of All. This Eve lives alone in a cave, occasionally visited by the raven Matthew, and points out that she “dwells in nightmares.”39 Like the children of Lilith, this Eve is also a creature that haunts the night.

  While Adam never makes a personal appearance in The Sandman series, in MacDonald’s Lilith, he plays a vital role. Mr. Vane, the man who has inherited the house haunted by the librarian who is also a raven, eventually learns that his shape-changing librarian-raven-ghost also happens to be Adam, the Father of All. Whereas Gaiman’s Adam disappears from the story after making the important decisions regard
ing which of the three women he really wanted, MacDonald’s Adam watches over his children, putting them down to “sleep” at the end of their earthly lives. This sleep is, of course, death, but these children of Adam sleep only to first, dream, and then to wake again into a new and glorious life. Mr. Vane, when he begins to understand Adam’s role, calls him the “lord of all that was laid aside.”40 He calls Adam’s home “the burial-ground of the universe.”41 In this way, MacDonald’s librarian is as closely associated with death as Gaiman’s. At the same time, however, MacDonald’s Adam does not disappear after three failed attempts to gain the perfect wife, but instead takes responsibility for the people that he has brought into the world, even if it is a grim responsibility. Just as a librarian does with his books, Adam carefully makes a place for the people he refers to as “all of my children.”42 After making a place for them, he carefully puts each one away in his or her rightful place, to wait until, like a library book, they are called for.

  While Gaiman’s Adam appears to no longer have any sort of a relationship with his third wife, MacDonald’s Adam has a strong relationship with his current wife. The first time Adam brings Mr. Vane to his home, he declares “here is my wife’s house! She is very good to let me live with her!”43 Their home is peaceful and their interactions with each other are gentle and kind. Both MacDonald’s and Gaiman’s Eves are very much traditional women who mostly stay in their homes. Gaiman’s Eve happens to make her home in nightmares, while MacDonald’s Eve lives with a husband who loves her in a house full of her sleeping children. Gaiman’s Eve is still suffering for her crime of disobedience, while MacDonald’s Eve has, in the words of Mr. Raven, “repented, and is now beautiful as never was woman or angel.”44

  Another character from this story that both work with is Lilith. Lilith comes into the story not through the Bible, as the others do, but through Midrash. She first appears in ancient Assyrian/Babylonian myth, but is not presented as Adam’s first wife until the Talmudic-midrash Aleph Bet of Ben-Sirach, which was written sometime between 800 and 1000 CE.45

  In The Sandman series, Eve describes Lilith as a proud, strong woman with many children who all torment the dreams of Adam’s descendents. Like Adam, Lilith has disappeared. Her ultimate fate is less important to this story than her original role: she rebelled, Adam did not want her, she gave birth to monsters. After all, it is Eve who tells both Adam’s and Lilith’s stories, and she has a good reason to not care about Lilith’s eventual fate.

  The Lilith presented by MacDonald, however, plays a very different role. Like Gaiman’s Lilith, she was Adam’s first wife, but in this case, it is Adam, not Eve, who explains the nature of Lilith’s rebellion:

  …she counted it slavery to be one with me, and bear children for HIM, who gave her being. One child, indeed, she bore; then, puffed with the fancy that she had created her, would have me fall down and worship her! Finding, however, that I would but love and honour, never obey and worship her, she poured out her blood to escape me.46

  This Lilith ran from Adam and joined herself to “The Great Shadow,” who, in turn, made Lilith the queen of hell.47 She now rules over a city of people whose dislike of each other is only outdone by their dislike of strangers, and she drinks the blood of infants born into that city. Those infants are not her children, but the children of Adam. Like both the Lilith and the Eve of Sandman, she is a creature closely associated with nightmare. Ultimately, however, this Lilith is bound by an army of children and delivered to the house in which Adam and Eve live. Adam greets them at the door “almost merrily,” while Eve looks at her and declares her “The mortal foe of my children!”48 Lilith, like the descendants of Adam, must lie down and sleep, but her sleep serves a different purpose. The Shadow, to whom she long ago aligned herself, now wishes to destroy her, and her only salvation is forgiveness and sleep. Where Gaiman’s Lilith and Eve are both left with open-ended stories, MacDonald’s Eve and Lilith both receive forgiveness, and, through forgiveness, peace.

  Thus far, Gaiman and MacDonald’s dialogic interaction has been, primarily, one of agreement. Both agree that an important step toward reshaping an understanding of death involves the creation of a new anthropomorphic character; both agree that raven librarians who are associated with death introduce an element of calmness and order to the idea. Viewing these texts as being in Bahktinian dialogue, however, reveals something important about the parts of the stories that are markedly different. In the case of Eve and Lilith, this shows something about how both authors bring culturally-shaped attitudes to the conversation they are having with ancient myth. The fate of MacDonald’s characters reflects attitudes of the Victorian England in which he wrote. Many writers discussing Victorian attitudes have pointed out that there was a strong belief at the time when MacDonald lived and wrote that humans were in a process of continual improvement, and that scientific, political, and social advances were going to make the world a much better place.49 The fate of MacDonald’s Lilith and Eve reflect this confidence in human improvement. The fate of Gaiman’s Eve and Lilith, however, do not share the same hope. Instead, they reflect the postmodern thought of the era in which they were created. Postmodern thought, as Jacques Lyotard explains in The Postmodern Condition, is not self-assured, has little hope in ideological structures and is, in many ways, the exact opposite of Victorian thought.50 These two writers have, therefore, brought their own cultures into this ongoing dialogue about death.

  In both MacDonald’s and Gaiman’s texts, Lilith has a daughter. In The Sandman: Season of Mists, Lucifer introduces Mazikeen, a denizen of Hell, as “A daughter of Lilith.”51 When Lucifer decides to “close down” hell and let everyone go, Mazikeen chooses to stay with him. One half of Mazikeen’s face is beautiful, while the other half has no skin. Her muscles and brain are exposed, as are her teeth. Like MacDonald’s Lilith, Mazikeen chooses to side with the evil one. But while The Shadow wanted to keep Lilith for himself, Lucifer tells Mazikeen that she may not go with him. She disobeys and follows him anyway. Eventually, Lucifer opens a club at which Mazikeen works (while wearing a mask so as not to frighten the customers), and when he ultimately chooses to close it, she promises again that she will follow him. This evil one does not choose her, but she chooses him and he allows her to trail along. The evil he presents in this relationship is not the desire to possess, as the Shadow does in MacDonald’s Lilith, but is simple indifference.

  Where Gaiman’s daughter of Lilith aligns herself with the Lord of Hell and follows him wherever he goes, MacDonald’s daughter of Lilith plays a vital role in her mother’s ultimate release from Satan’s power. At the beginning of her story, Lona, like Mazikeen, has no interaction with her mother. But where Mazikeen’s broken relationship may be because her mother is, like the lord of hell that she follows around, simply indifferent to her existence, Lona’s mother hates her with a passion. At one point when she confronts Adam, MacDonald’s Lilith declares that if she has the chance, she will drink her own daughter’s blood. Lona’s army of children, however, overcomes Lilith and takes her prisoner. First they take her to the house of Mara, a daughter of Adam and Eve whose job it is to teach people the meaning of sorrow. After this, Lona leads the army of children as they take their victim to the home of their first parents. During this procession, Lilith experiences a change of heart toward her daughter.

  At the home of Adam and Eve, Lilith finds, however, that she cannot let go of The Shadow herself. A long debate ensues, from which it is ultimately determined that Adam must cut off Lilith’s hand with the sword that once guarded the gates of Eden. Cutting off her hand is a physical symbol of Lilith’s break with Satan, and it is vital that her former husband be the one to bring about this break. And yet it is not a renewed love for Adam, but her new-found love first for her daughter, then the children that her daughter rescued, that saves Lilith. Lona, the daughter of Lilith, is also important because Mr. Vane, the human whose own adventures have mixed dangerously with Lilith’s, falls in love not with a daughter of
Eve, but a daughter of Lilith. And when Lilith lies down to sleep, so does her daughter, and so, ultimately, does Mr. Vane. All three accept the peace that is offered in Adam’s house, not the peace of a hopeless death, even though death is what they have accepted, but the peace of sleep that will end in the awakening of a new and glorious dawn. Whereas Gaiman’s daughter of Lilith is caught in a story that has no closure, MacDonald’s has found the closure she needs in forgiving her mother, getting to know her father, and laying down to sleep in hope. The fates of both Lona and Makizeen, like Eve and Lilith before them, again bring cultural attitudes of the eras in which they were created to the conversation at hand.