Luna’s Prose Ramblings

The read-through review of The Graveyard Book is temporarily halted. This because of some insignificant event that’s coming up, like Dax and my wedding. Can you believe it?

We will continue after the break. Hope you’ll join me then.

For previous chapters in this review, click here or go there by clicking on the The Graveyard Book tag in the tagcloud in the bottom right hand column.

If you have not already done so, watch Neil read chapter four here.

Chapter 4 The Witch’s Headstone

After foreshadowing being the central subject of the last chapter’s read-through, it becomes clear soon enough that the time has come for Bod to undertake the classical hero’s quest.

At the start of the chapter, Bod, as the central hero of the story, is warned not to go looking beyond the edge of the graveyard. Bod has heard this warning often in the past and since Bod is an obedient boy, he satisfies himself by only asking questions of Silas.

‘[I]n your land, they blessed the churches and the ground they set aside to bury people in, to make it holy. But they left ground unconsecrated beside the sacred ground, potter’s fields to bury the criminals and the suicides, or those who were not of the faith.’

In his favourite thinking spot, the apple tree that he eats the fruit of readily, Bod oversees the potter’s field. While trying to get at a particular nice-looking red ripe apple, Bod breaks the branch that he is on and lands himself right where he wasn’t supposed to go.

It’s great to see the apple as the of symbol of knowledge return in so many forms in as many stories. Here it particularly strikes me that Bod, in his search and reach for knowledge, he finds himself to have ended up in exactly that one place he wasn’t suppose to go. It shows us clearly enough, that while absorbing knowledge, we will never know where we travel until we are there and there is no turning back.

And there indeed seems no turning back for Bod either, when he meets the young girl witch in the potter’s field and hears the tale of her trial. When the attempted drowning didn’t suffice, she surfaced to curse the onlookers to unrest in their lives beyond, which gained her a spot atop a pyre and the unmarked grave at which she still lives. Elizabeth Hemstock with a big E, for Elizabeth, like the old queen that died when she was born, and a big Haitch, for Hempstock.

As befitting a hero, Bod decides that he will have to get Liza a headstone. Since his savings only go as far as the coins that were left in the graveyard by its frequenters, he goes back to the Celt’s tomb and the guardian Sleer to retrieve a treasure large enough to buy a headstone in town. The jewel Bod picks is the red snakestone inlaid in a silver snake with too many heads. But the Sleer warn him that the jewel always comes back.

This passage reminds me of the concept of the false quest object. Although in this case, the jewel that Bod retrieves from the tomb is indeed valuable, it was never his to take and the stolen treasure will never serve Bod’s intended purpose. Hinting at this fact are several things. One is the Sleer’s assertion that ‘It comes back. Always comes back’. Also, the jewel itself. The red snakestone is mounted on a silver body of a snake with too many heads. The trickster serpent symbolism is abound here and the many snake heads leads me to think of another trickster, Medusa. The jewel is a false object in the quest. In truth, it is not, like Bod hoped, the treasure that will bring the quest to a good end, it’s the hero’s cunning and wit that will help him to complete his task and this not without effort and sacrifice on the hero’s part.

Bod goes into town, into the pawn shop of Abanazar Bolger. The name is cleverly chosen. Abanazar is the name of the evil sorcerer that disguises himself as a lamp trader in the tale of Aladdin and who locks the unsuspecting youth in the treasure vault. As soon as Bod shows Abanazar the treasure, Bod is locked in the back room and the snakestone is taken from him. Abanazar remembers the man Jack, who was looking for a boy fitting Bod’s description and weighs the pros and cons of keeping Bod to find more treasure or contacting Jack to gain a reward. As Bod tries unsuccessfully to recall Mr. Pennyworth’s directions for Fading, Liza, who is buried in unconsecrated grounds and therefore not bound to them, shows up to pitch in her tuppence. She overhears enough conversation between Abanazar and his business partner, Tom, to know that they mean Bod harm.

Bod arms himself with a paperweight and paint to chuck at his captors in case of emergency and with help of Liza manages to Fade. Abanazar and Tom believe Bod to have escaped and a fight over the ownership of the snakestone breaks out. Abanazar and Tom manage to take each other down into unconsciousness, which gives Bod the chance to use a piece of paper, a paintbrush, his wit and cunning to get himself safely out of the store room. On the way out, Bod and Liza snatch the snakestone and Jack’s contact card with them.

Off back to safety, Bod runs into Silas, who unfortunately for Bod plays up the ‘I am disappointed in you’ tactic. Bod gives Silas Jack’s card to dispose of and returns the snakestone to the Sleer. Bod realises that he was unable to get Liza the headstone that he had in mind, but gives her an even more precious token. With the paint and paintbrush from the pawn shop, Bod makes a headstone out of the paperweight, swirling with colour. On it he writes, E.H. we don’t forget.

Two hundred miles away, Jack wakes up knowing something has happened.

There are a few more remarkable things hidden in the story that complement the theme of the hero’s journey of this chapter. The snakestone is an item that will corrupt the minds of the greedy and can only be retrieved and wielded by the fearless and pure at heart. A similar item was the One Ring in the epic hero tales of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring was also an object that exuded power over the weak and greedy and could only be handled and withstood by the strong and brave.

Also, the hero in a quest will often have to bring a sacrifice of their own to win one of the trials of the task. In this tale, Bod quite literally gives himself up to escape the store room. With help of his friend Liza, he all but fades away completely. If dissolution of one’s self is not the ultimate sacrifice, I do not know what is !

For previous chapters in this review, click here or go there by clicking on the The Graveyard Book tag in the tagcloud in the bottom right hand column.

If you have not already done so, watch Neil read chapter three here.

Chapter 3 The Hounds of God

I am in two minds about this chapter. This chapter has some exquisite foreshadowing in it and that will be the main topic in today’s read-through review. On the other hand, the way Neil uses the vast majority of the elements of foreshadowing in this chapter is a bit disappointing to me.

Maybe I am thinking too complex. Maybe I have become used to foreshadowing being ingeniously hidden in the depths of a story. And maybe I should step away from that expectation to just enjoy the simple, glaringly obvious foreshadowing if it has been lain on the surface with intent and is happy to wave at us passers-by every chance it gets. Maybe I should just stop whining.

The chapter starts with a mood-setting description of a ghoul gate. Water-stained, with scraggly grass or rank weeds and often adorned with a headless statue or coated in fungus. And it’s not being concealed that we are going to see one of them from up close very soon.

Bod is six now and being confronted not only with a leaving Silas, but also a strict, puckering Russian-sounding woman with a pinched face and disapproving expression, who will be continuing Bod’s lessons while Silas is away. I, myself, thought at the initial meeting that Bod could have done without this teacher, but we soon learn otherwise. The woman goes by the name of Lupescu and anyone etymologically inclined will immediately recognise the wolf implication in the name. The new teacher has rented a house alongside the graveyard and will see Bod on a daily basis. Score two for foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, Silas has packed his antique black leather bag, which could have belonged to a Victorian doctor or undertaker, complete with padlock and heavy contents. Silas tells Bod that he will be away to gather information and uncover things. Why, Mr. Silas, would you need an extraordinarily heavy bag to gather information, dear sir ? Is there no such thing as a vampire travelling light ?

Miss Lupescu is here to take on Silas’s duties while he is away, most important of which is providing Bod with the food that the ghosts cannot. And she does this with verve. So much so that she manages to estrange Bod even more than she already had in their first meeting. Let’s just say that that was not a point for the team. And although Silas’s teachings had always been pragmatic and insightful, Lupescu chooses to take the more authoritative approach. She drills Bod on the different peoples of the world – the living, the dead, the day-folk, the night-folk, the ghouls, the mist-walkers, the high-hunters, the Hounds of God and the solitary types – and how to ask for help in all languages known to her. Foreshadowing number three and, yes… four. She even goes a far as reminding Bod that night-gaunts fly the red skies above Ghûlheim. Being Dutch, it’s not much of a secret that the German word Heim means home and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that Ghûlheim must be where the ghouls rest their weary heads. That makes five counts of foreshadowing so far.

And this is where we see the titular Hound of God for the first time. After one of Miss Lupescu’s disastrous lessons, Bod walks the graveyard and sees a large grey dog prowling, keeping away and slipping between the gravestones and shadows. Later we hear Bod ask Miss Lupescu whether the dog he saw was hers since it appeared when she arrived. In response, Miss Lupescu straightens her tie and answers no. I think you shouldn’t have lobbed that lump of soil at it, Bod!

Feeling unloved, abandoned and unappreciated, Bod falls asleep on grave with a water-stained, cracked memorial stone adorned by a headless angel hung in robes which look like ugly tree fungus. Hmm… where have we heard this before ? Pay-off number one.

Three ghouls appear. They scamper the walls of the graveyard looking for a gate for them to pass through. On the way they have a conversation about smelling a ‘ware dog’. Now this concept is a glorious one. The adjective ware is a derivative of an archaic form of the verb ‘to be aware’ and stems from its Germanic origin meaning ‘to observe’ or ‘to take care’. But it naturally also puts in mind the well known term of ‘were’ as in werewolf. So the ghouls are already aware of the guard weredog that prowls the graveyard and smell it alongside the graveyard. That reminds me of the fact that Lupescu does not live far away from the graveyard. Pay-off number two. When the ghouls arrive at the gate they find Bod sleeping there. It doesn’t take much convincing for Bod to agree that he will be more appreciated in the ghoul world and through the gate they take him.

The sky is the colour red of an infected wound, hung with an old, small, distant sun. The ghouls Bod meets wear the names of the first main courses that they had after being turned and I am assuming that with it they took nothing of their meals intelligence or I would have expected a bit more eloquence from the ghoul Harry S Truman.

While on the way to Ghûlheim (pay-off number three), Bod has seen enough to have changed his mind about going. He thinks of ways to escape and realises, as we have done, that the creatures flying in the sky are the same ones that Miss Lupescu had told him about – night-gaunts. Bod tries to call one to him with the shrill shriek that he was taught in his lesson, but the attempt is futile. At daybreak, the party of ghouls is noticebly smaller and moves on while Bod starts to worry about the howling that plagued them in the night.

On the second day, to prevent Bod from crying for help again, he is carried in a sack, which he manages to damage. In a bid for freedom Bod falls out the sack and lands on the steps to Ghûlheim hurting his ankle, right under the nose of a huge, grey dog. In panic, Bod tries to flee and trips off of the stair, away from safety and an exasperated and reproachful sounding Miss Lupescu. In the swoop that Bod hoped would come when he first called out to them, a night-gaunt scoops him out of the air and delivers him safely to the ground and Miss Lupescu. She explains that the creature came to Bod’s aid thrice – once when he called out to them and they flew to Miss Lupescu to warn her, the second time when they disposed of some ghouls at the nighttime fire that meant Bod harm and now to fly him to safety. Pay-off number four.

She also explains that she is a Hound of God, the name for the being that men call werewolves or lycanthropes ‘as they claim their transformation is a gift from their creator, and they repay their gift with their tenacity, for they will pursue an evil-doer to the very gates of Hell.’ Pay-off number five.

On Silas’s return, he find Bod and Miss Lupescu in an unprecedented good relation. He arrives with a stiff right arm and a model of the Golden Gate bridge. Hmmm… I won’t say that his trip to San Fransisco is necessary another foreshadowing but the condition of his arm certainly is. Silas questions the two politely by mentioning that he heard a rumour that Bod and Lupescu went further afield than Silas would be able to follow. I wonder if this is because he is a vampire?

The tally is clear. This chapter contains so much foreshadowing, it is seeping through the cracks to the point were it becomes a tad weary. The chapter feels crowded with so many dropped hints, almost all of which are payed-off within the same self-contained tale. Only the very last passage on the return of Silas contains an element of foreshadowing that we have not seen rewarded yet. And of course I might be making the mistake of assuming that all of these instances of foreshadowing are already payed-off and do not foreshadow an even larger event which is still to come, in which case I will gladly swallow my words and not only give the hat-tip that I do now, but the deep bow that is deserved. For the moment, Neil Gaiman is a master shadower if I have ever seen one to get so many of them is so few pages, but to keep the element of surprise at a more satisfying level, I would recommend to not make it all so glaringly obvious.

On to chapter four with what I hope is more suspense.