Graveyard Book Themes

The Graveyard Book is a horror story with bits of humor here and there. It is important to have humor in scary story so it can make the reader more at ease. Some examples of humor is when the man jack is murdering the family the baby escapes by climbing over his teddy bear and bumping down the stairs without being heard because his diaper muffled the sound. There are parts like this scattered throughout the book.

‘The Grave’ by Katherine Anne Porter is a story that illustrates the initiation of a child from innocence to experience. The underlying theme behind the central idea of innocence to experience is the cycle of life and death and rebirth. This theme is illustrated in the young protagonist, Miranda, and her epiphany on the concept of the cycle of life and rebirth. The dominant tone in ‘The Grave’ is melancholic, and that tone is created through the language elements of symbolism, diction, and imagery. The story’s tone is also supported by the fiction element character.

When a mentor gives you lemons, you make the lemonade. In the book The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the person most important in Bod Owens’s life is his mentor, Silas. Bod Owens did not have the average teenage life; he was raised by two dead parents who live in a graveyard, and was not allowed to leave the graveyard unless his parents gave him permission. The lady on the Grey is the symbol of death that mentors Silas, which gives her and Silas a similar “job” in their afterlife.

Imagine being stabbed by an unrepentant murderer before a date, but you realize only then your life truly begins. The protagonist in Gary Soto’s The Afterlife, Chuy, becomes a spirit and finds himself stuck in a world between the living and the dead. Chuy observes the daily lives of his grief-stricken family and friends which sparks a sudden hatred towards his murderer. As he transitions into the afterlife, he undergoes several significant physical and emotional transformations and develops a love for a ghostly girl who committed suicide.

The Graveyard Book written by Neil Gaiman is a fictional book published in 2008. The setting in the beginning of the story is in a house in the middle of the night, but it very quickly transitions to a graveyard. Towards the end, the setting is all throughout the town, in which the house and graveyard are located. This book is written in the third person point of view. Having a third person point of view helps the author tell the story the way he wants to by not showing an emotional connection with the protagonist but still making the reader develop positive emotions toward the protagonist.

Fictional novels, in this case, The Graveyard Book, can teach us about ourselves. A fictional novel is imaginary and is not necessarily based true facts. The Graveyard Book was published in 2008 by Neil Gaiman. This book is about a normal boy named Nobody Owens but is known to his friends as Bod. Bod is raised in the graveyard by educated ghosts, a solitary guardian who is neither living nor dead and is under attack by the Man Jack. Two ideas that have been demonstrated throughout the novel is that life is full of endless possibilities and relationships are a key part of our identity. This novel teaches us about ourselves and the experiences that we have with our relationships with other people in our life with

Death, the momentary nature of life, the reminder that life can be taken from us at any given time. Anyone who is at the face of death wants to grasp onto any sort of hope, particularly being at war where there is a certainty of death. These are all ideas and themes explored in Kenneth Slessor’s sonnet, Beach Burial. The poem is not your typical glorified heroic notion of soldiers losing lives type of war poem, instead encompassing the uselessness of war and its dehumanisation of people. Slessor’s poem is a touching tribute to the soldiers who fought for Australia in World War II. The soldiers risking their lives fighting for their country were at the face of death, it was inevitable they were going to die serving their country. Beach Burial is an ideal inclusion in the Red Cross Anthology as the reader senses both hope and despair through a series of clear and observable literary techniques of theme, emotive language, poetic devices as well as imagery and symbolism. These techniques are used to convey his message, which can be analysed with a view to better accessing and therefore understanding the notions of hope and despair.

“Forgotten Dead” by authors William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, delivered a collective narration of the numerous lynching crimes against Mexican people in the southern west states of the United States. Their purpose was to describe that extend of mob violations against the minority groups of people in the United States. By, arguing how many of these racial crimes were prejudice to eliminate the potential competition for territory, and gold mines’ economy that were potentially able to provide the envy position that Anglo people were afraid to loose. They wanted to figure out, who these forgotten dead Mexicans were at the time, and what types of “crimes” they committed to face such cruelty death in the hands of the mob Anglo groups. They uncovered the grand extend of violent scenes that Anglo vigilantes members of mob groups organized the banishment of many Mexican in what they had considered part of their territory at the time.

While Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book takes a different approach and delves into what is, by all accounts, unknown and unseen; it more than raises the question of what happens when one dies and explores the physical world as well as the supernatural. Upon her death, Bod’s mother entrusts her son, a mortal being, not to other living beings, but to those who have already gone before her - those with the wisdom to raise him well. With various cautions along the way, Bod is kept safe until he learns what he needs to learn to exist as a force for good in the world. Through disobedience or excess curiosity, Bod sometimes finds himself in perilous situations along the way. Thoughout the story we are reminded that life indeed is fragile; but death, for most, is not to be feared. The story explores the existence of other spiritual beings who watch over us (the Hounds of God) and well as some of the bad guys who once held places of honor in the current physical world. Indeed, the dance of the macabre demonstrates that death is much closer than we think by it’s inevitability and we would do well to consider the consequences of our actions.

Have you ever felt like you are living in a world where humanity isn’t at its best? Have you ever felt mixed emotions by watching a TV show? Is it possible for a show to represent love, hate, anger, drama, pain, sadness or even cause you a sense of distress? The Walking Dead is the perfect show to make you think about how people act in different situations in life and shows us what type of people these circumstances can create. The show is based on a post-apocalyptic time where the existence of humanity is near its end. The Walking Dead represents themes of fear, betrayal, sacrifice, hope, leadership and, the conflict between good and bad. Some aspects of the show such as the character development and how, psychologically, the characters tend

Most Romantic Literature seem to have formulated a communal moral or theme when closely looked at. “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe, “Prey” by Richard Matheson, and “The Feather Pillow” by Horacio Quiroga are three short stories that are all in the genre of gothic literature; that have at least two common themes. The two themes that intertwine all these stories together are: a supernatural force being among characters, and the unsightly presences of violence or revenge. All three writings have the use of supernatural forces and some sort of violence or revenge to demonstrate that good things may not always be what they seem and if you underestimate how dangerous or powerful something is it might end up hurting your stature or reputation in the end.

Death and dying are major components of gothic literature. In order to rehabilitate, you are compelled to acknowledge the pain of the person you have lost. People also deal with death by understanding that their grieving process is unique to them. Also by understanding the difference of grief and depression. The characters in the stories deal with death like the examples shown above. It also takes some people a little longer than others to heal themselves from their loss.

The opening paragraph of the story describes how peaceful the dead woman looked in her bed before her children could say the final goodbye to their loving mother. Her facial features looked calm, and her long white hair was carefully arranged as though she wanted to leave this world as beautiful and blameless as her life was. At the beginning of the story her character was introduced as a "sweet soul that lived in that body," who managed to raise two successful children alone by "arming them with a strict moral code, teaching them religion, without weakness, and duty, without compromise."

A comparison of the ways that the dead affect the living in the novels Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

Abraham Lincoln said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Often times in our society young people push off responsibilities, it's easy to do. Technology and other innovations have made it convenient for us to become distracted and to push things off. However when growing up, sometimes taking responsibility cannot be avoided. In coming of age stories, the author uses symbolism to exemplify how the protagonists experience new independence and responsibility while they transition from childhood to adulthood.