Dark Name-Play in
Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book
winner of the 2009 Newbery Award
winner of the 2009 National Book Award
winner of a major prize for “Best Recorded Book”
by Don L. F. Nilsen
English Department
Arizona State University
1
How Nobody Owens Got His
Name
•
Silas said, “Suppose we pick a name for him, eh?”
•
Caius Pompeius stepped over and eyed the child. “He looks a little
like my proconsul, Marcus. We could call him Marcus.”
•
Josiah Worthington said, “He looks more like my head gardener,
Stebbins. Not that I’m suggesting Stebbins as a name. The man
drank like a fish.”
•
“He looks like my nephew Harry,” said Mother Slaughter, and almost
everybody in the graveyard had a name for the Owens child (24)
2
• “He looks like nobody but himself,” said Mrs. Owens, firmly. “He
looks like nobody.”
• “Then Nobody it is,” said Silas. “Nobody Owens” (25).
• And throughout the book the name “Nobody” was shortened to
“Bod” by the good people, and to “Boy” by the bad people.
• And Miss Lupescu calls him “Nimini” (211).
3
How are dead people better than most live people?
• Silas is talking to Nobody: “Soon enough you will master
Fading and Sliding and Dreamwalking.”
• “But some skills cannot be mastered by the living, and for
those you must wait a little longer” (37).
• In addition to “fading,” “sliding” and “dreamwalking,” Nobody
is also learning “fear” or “frightening,” “haunting,” “watching
stars,” and even “visitation” (189-190, 217).
4
It takes a graveyard to raise Nobody.
• Because everybody in the graveyard is
supposed to take care of Nobody Owens, he
is given the “Freedom of the Graveyard.”
• Thus Nobody Owens can see in the dark and
can travel from place to place like a ghost
passing through solid objects and fences at
will.
5
The man Jack and Nobody Owens
• The man Jack and Nobody Owens are
the first two characters we meet.
• “He could smell the child: a milky
smell, like chocolate chip cookies, and
the sour tang of a wet, disposable,
nighttime diaper.” (9)
6
Nobody Owens and
Scarlett Amber Perkins
• Nobody Owens would tell Scarlett
Amber Perkins about “how Sebastian
Reeder had been called to London
Town and had seen the Queen, who
had been a fat woman in a fur cap who
glared at everyone and spoke no
English.”
7
Nick Farthing and Maureen Quilling
• Nick Farthing “was practical, in a basic sort of way,
an efficient shoplifter, and occasional thug.”
• [NOTE: He liked to nick things]
• “He had a friend. Her name was Maureen Quilling.
Nick liked to shoplift, but Mo told him what to steal.”
• [Note the similarity of “Farthing and Quilling” to
“farthing and shilling”]
8
Abanazer Bolger
• In order to provide a headstone for Elizabeth Hempstock, Bod
finds the pawnbroker’s shop of Abanazer Bolger, which
accepts “objects that may not have been acquired entirely
honestly, and then quietly shifting them on” (120).
• “Abanazer Bolger had thick spectacles and a permanent
expression of mild distaste.”
• “‘Honestly,’ he would tell people, sour-faced, ‘it’s not really
worth anything at all. I’ll give you what I can, though, as it has
sentimental value” (120).
9
Color Symbolism:
Scarlett Amber Perkins and the Indigo Man
• Scarlet is the color of blood.
• And this is how the Indigo man is described:
• “His skin was painted (Bod thought) or tattoed
(Scarlett thought) with purple designs and patterns.”
• “Around his neck hung a necklace of sharp, long
teeth” (52).
10
Caius Pompeius
• Caius Pompeius “had asked to be laid to rest on the
mound beside the marble shrine, rather than to have
his body sent back to Rome, and he was one of the
most senior citizens of the graveyard” (16).
• Caius Pompeius came to the graveyard a hundred
years after the Romans first arrived in England (44).
11
Mother Slaughter and Laughter
• Mother Slaughter was “a tiny old thing, in the huge
bonnet and cape that she had worn in life and been
buried wearing” (22).
• “So Bod picked the red and yellow nasturtiums, and
he carried them over to Mother Slaughter’s
Headstone, so cracked and worn and weathered that
all it said now was…
• LAUGH” (297).
12
Silas
• Like Silas Marner, Neil Gaiman’s Silas was a
caregiver.
• Silas was the only one who could leave the
graveyard, because he wasn’t all the way
dead.
• He could leave the graveyard at night and
return with food and books for Nobody
Owens (23).
13
Silas Educates Nobody Owens
• “Silas appeared at the front of the Owenses’ cozy
tomb carrying three large books—two of them
brightly colored alphabet books, and a copy of The
Cat in the Hat.”
• “Silas gave Bod a quest—to find each of the twentysix letters in the graveyard—and Bod finished it,
proudly, with the discovery of Ezekiel Ulmsley’s
stone” (38-39).
14
How is Silas like
Stephenie Meyer’s Edward?
• “I want to be like you,” said Bod, pushing out his
lower lip.
• “No,” said Silas, firmly. “You do not” (38).
• “‘I,’ said Silas, ‘am precisely what I am, and nothing
more. I am, as you say, not alive. But if I am ended, I
shall simply cease to be. My kind are, or we are not”
(179).
15
How are the Sleers like
J. K. Rowling’s Slitherins and Fluffy?
• The name of the Sleers, like the name of the
Slitherins, begins with a hissing sound, the sound of
snakes and of Parseltongues.
• Like Fluffy, the Sleers have three heads and guard
the treasures of “the master.” The Sleers also must
“protect the master.”
• The treasure of Frobisher Mausoleum consists of the
brooch, the goblet and the knife (56).
16
Names of Other Ghosts in The Graveyard
• Also in The Graveyard can be found the headstones
of Thackeray Porringer (who had died of apoplexy
when he could not find a bucket of red and white
striped paint),
• and Euphemia Horsfall (who had lived and died
during Victorian times)
• and Tom Sands (who had lived and died during the
Hundred Years War with France) (175-176).
17
The Poet Nehemiah Trot
And His Onomastic Advice to Bod
• BOD: “There’s a girl I used to know, and I wasn’t
sure if I should find her and talk to her or if I should
just forget about it.”
• NT: “Oh! You must go to her and implore her and
implore her. You must call her your Terpischore,
your Echo, your Clytemnestra. And thus—and only
thus—shall you win your true love’s heart” (232).
18
Gulheim and Ghoul Gate
• In German, “heim” means “home.” So
Gulheim is the home of the ghouls.
• Every graveyard has a Ghoul Gate.
• All Ghoul Gates are, “waterstained and
bulging, with cracked or broken stone,
scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a
feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment.”
19
• “If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so
scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like a fungus
itself.”
• “If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty
vandals, that is the ghoulgate” (61).
• The “Hounds of Heaven” that came out of Neil Gaiman’s
Graveyard included the Duke of Westminster, the Honorable
Archibald Fitzhugh, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Emperor
of China, and the 33rd President of the United States (74, 80).
• “Bod said, “What are you people?”
• “Ghouls,” said the Bishop of Bath and Wells” (81).
20
Elizabeth Hempstock
•
Chapter 4 is entitled “The Witch’s Headstone.”
•
It is about the unconsecrated Potter’s Fields that are next to the
Graveyard for burying criminals and suicides and witches.
•
Elisabeth Hempstock was buried here.
•
“She wore a plain white shift. Her hair was mousy and long, and there
was something of the goblin in her face—a sideways hint of a smile
that seemed to linger, no matter what the rest of her face was doing”
(99-103, 109)
21
• Liza tells Bod that she had been identified as a witch, and had
been “drownded and burnded and buried here without as much
as a stone to mark the spot” (110).
• When asked if she was a witch, she replied, “Of course I was a
witch.”
• “The Saturday after they drownded and toasted me, a carpet was
delivered to Master Porringer, all the way from London Town,
and it was a fine carpet” with strong wool and good weaving
(111).
• But it “carried the plague in its pattern” and in a week, most of
the village was dead (112).
22
E. H.
• But Elizabeth Hemstock didn’t have a
headstone:
• When asked what she wanted on her
headstone, she replied,
• “My name. It must have my name on it, with
a big E, for Elizabeth, like the old queen that
died when I was born, and a big Haitch, for
Hempstock” (117).
23
Miss Lupescu
• Since Silas has difficulty taking care of Nobody, he makes
arrangements for Miss Lupescu to take care of him:
• He tells her that his name is “Bod,” which is short for
“Nobody.”
• She thinks his name is “Boy.”
• When he says, “It’s Bod. Not boy,” she disapproves:
•
‘boy.’ You will call me ‘Miss Lupescu’” (66).
24
Miss Lupescu
Is she living or dead?
• “Miss Lupescu was not pretty. Her face was pinched and her
expression was disapproving. Her hair was grey, although her
face seemed too young for grey hair. Her front teeth were
slightly crooked. She wore a bulky mackintosh and a man’s tie
around her neck” (66).
• She spends a lot of time in this graveyard because she is a
historian, researching the history of old graves (67).
• Miss Lupescu is described as having a wolf-tongue, that
speaks through wolf teeth, and she also growls (239). I wonder
why?
25
• “‘I am one of the Hounds of God,” said
Miss Lupescu. ‘I will stand.’ She
lowered her face into the shadows,
flexed her fingers. When she raised her
head again, it was a wolf’s head.”
• “She put her front paws down on the
rock, and, laboriously, pushed herself
up into a standing position: a grey wolf
bigger than a bear, her coat and muzzle
flecked with blood” (247).
26
Dance Macabre
• Chapter 5 of The Graveyard Book is entitled “Dance Macabre,”
and in the CD version (read by Neil Gaiman) Camille Saint
Saens’ Dance Macabre begins and ends each of the CDs.
• Dance Macabre is written in the Devil’s Interval, which is half
way between the most common intervals in music, the fourth
(which adds a flat), and the fifth (which adds a sharp).
• It’s a devil of an interval to play in because of the natural
tendencies of a musician to go up or down to the more
common intervals.
27
The Macabray
• Throughout chapter 5, a chant keeps recurring with
the first line changing, and the second line resolving
as “Come to dance the Macabray.” (144-158).
• And then the living and dead get together to “dance
the macabray.”
• And they danced, “stepping together in unison,
walking and kicking, a line dance that had been
ancient a thousand years before” (159).
28
The Woman in Grey
• And on a white horse came the woman in
grey, “wearing a long grey dress that hung
and gleamed beneath the December moon
like cobwebs in the dew” (160).
• When Bod asks the woman in grey, if he can
ride her horse, she responds,
• “One day. One day. Everybody does.”
29
Charles Dickens’ “Jacquerie”
and Neil Gaiman’s “Jacquerie”
• Charles Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities was set
during the French Revolution.
• In that novel, three of the characters were named
Jacques 1, Jacques 2, and Jacques 3.
• This is because at this time the lower classes didn’t
deserve to have real names. All non-aristocrats
were part of “le jacquerie.”
30
Chapter 7: “Everyman Jack”
The Jacks of All Trades
•
There is a prophesy that Nobody Owens will kill the Jacks of all trades.
•
There is Jack Tar.
•
There is Jack Dandy.
•
There is Jack be Nimble
•
there is Jack Ketch
•
And there is “the man Jack,” whose real name is Jack Frost.
•
And they are all trying to kill Nobody Owens (211-294).
•
But you’ll have to read the novel to find out if they are successful.
31
Web Sites
A.L.A.N.: Adolescent Literature Assembly of N.C.T.E.
www.alan-ya.org
Journal of Literary Onomastics:
http://www.brockport.edu/english/onomastics.html
32
Reference:
Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book. New
York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008
33