Analysis Of The Graveyard Book By Neil Gaiman

The book I read for this reflective essay is called The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. This novel is an intriguing tale of gruesome murder, friendly specters, an unknown creature, a desire for unexplainable knowledge, and the Freedom of the Graveyard. One night, a man was walking about the house, his knife dripping wet. He had already killed the parents and the oldest child. He only had the baby to take care of. He approached the crib. He saw the shape of the child. He raised his knife, aiming at the chest. Suddenly, he lowered it. There was no child, just a teddy bear. He hadn’t realized the baby had snuck out of the house, and had crawled up to the graveyard. The man, known as Jack, smelled the child, and followed the scent into the graveyard.

When Bod is put into the hands of Miss Lupescu’s, he finds her lessons impractical. When Bod travels through the ghoul gates, he finds that learning Night-Gaunt was more convenient than he realized. Without this imperative knowledge, Bod might have died. Also, when his parents and guardian specifically told him not to go outside of the graveyard, Bod disobeyed. He went to a hop to get his witchy friend, Liza, a tombstone. His decision caused him to be locked into a bathroom with only little escape. The second theme is it takes communal effort to achieve great things. In the beginning of the novel, Silas warns everyone that it will “take a graveyard to raise him.” This is evident throughout the story. Ghosts and Witches help Bod through his adventures, and they save him in various situations. The ghosts guided and teached, the witch befriended him, the werewolf saved him, and the vampire guarded him. The third theme is understanding the importance of interaction between the living and the dead. Sometimes, the living interacting with the dead isn’t such a good thing. Bod may have been living, but he still had properties of the dead. This is why the relationship between Scarlet (Bod’s childhood friend) and Bod didn’t have a happy ending, because the living/dead and living can’t get along. They may have liked and respected each other, but Scarlet’s memories had to be taken away,

The interior conflict is that Bod feels like he has a connection to the graveyard and the outside world, but can’t decide where he belongs. He knows all about the graveyard, but yearns to learn about the world he has never been to. He is battling the decision in his head during the entire novel. Another interior conflict is that Bod cares about Silas, and regrets disobeying him, and he keeps making many decisions that Silas didn’t like. It hurts Bod, but he knows he must do it. The biggest exterior conflict in this book is Jack of All Trades. This group threatens Bod and his closest human friend, Scarlet. Jack Frost, the man who killed Bod’s family, is the biggest threat of all the Jacks. Another exterior conflict was at the shop where Bod was buying a tombstone. The shopkeeper stole the brooch and put Bod in danger. The final conflict was when Silas got hit by a car. Bod claimed that Silas was his father, and he thought Silas was dead. Bod was hurt very badly, because he cared his “father” very