Themes in the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimen
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Good vs. Evil
Parents and Guardians
Community and identity
Life vs. Death
Characters: Silas, Mrs. Owens and Mr. Owens
Mrs. Owen: Maternal, caring and kind. Adopts Bod, "Come to Mama".
Silas saves Bod from the Police car
"All around Bod, the inhabitants of the graveyard were waking and gathering, worried and alarmed”. - sense of community
Liza Hempstock always looked out for Bod: "I am still not talking to you’, said Liza Hempstock’s voice, proud as a peacock and pert as a sparrow”.
Bod can speak to the dead: “Scarlett could tell that Bod was talking to people as he went, but could only hear his side of the conversation”.
Silas: “might be wise for you to remember and what it might be better for you to forget”. Silas erases Scarlet's memory so he can protect Bod.
Miss Lupescu gave Bod an education: “Miss Lupescu taught me how to watch stars".
Miss Lupescu: “She fought bravely. She fought for you, Bod".
Bod grows, matures and leaves the graveyard: "If I come back, it will be a place, but it wont be home any longer...For the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill”. A lose of identity for Bod.
"He tried to put his arms around his mother then, as he has when he was a child, although he might as well have been trying to hold mist, for he was alone on the path”. Mrs. Owens cared for Bod from a baby to an adult.
Jack Frost is trying to kill Bod to save himself from death.
The Macabray Dance- a dance celebrating life and death.
Setting: Takes place in a graveyard.
Silas: buys food and clothes for Bod. Teaches him how to tie his laces and is described as "Dependable" yet is not an affectionate father figure as Bod communicates: "He could no more huge Silas than he could hold a moonbean"
Jack: "Tell me to come and see me, your friend. Ill fill him in”- setting up a trap for Bod.
Maureen Quilling is a bully: Well, of course I'm being watched, she thought. A hundred dead things in jars all looking at me, not to mention the skeleton...That was when the dead things in the jars began to move".
Bod is alive while all his family are ghosts.
Lady on the Grey Horse who symbolizes death, Bod innocently asks can he "Can I ride him?"
"and Bod realised why he had danced as one of the living and not as one of the crew that had walked down the hill"- Bod is not like his dead family.
Mr. Dandy: "You had time. Now, you have a deadline...time's a ticking".
Good: Silas, Mrs. Owens, Scarlet, Miss Lupescu, Liza Hempstock
Nick Farthing is also a bully: "Grinned down at him, a sharpened pencil in his fist"