Neil Gaiman’s "The Graveyard Book" From The Perspective of The Carnivalesque Inversion
Among the criteria of selection of children’s and young adult literature, experts place a special emphasis on such aspects as an effective meeting the needs of students as individual readers, taking into account personal pedagogical responses of teachers, the aesthetic possibilities of a book, text complexity as well as the visual elements of a text (Jiménez & Mchilhagga 56). The Graveyard Book (2008) by Neil Gaiman, definitely meets at least three of these requirements, since its aesthetic variety along with the philosophic complexity and didactical competence are obvious for both ordinary readers and literary critics (The Graveyard Book Study Guide). According one of them, Don L. F. Nilsen:
“Gaiman’s tale is delightfully spooky, but also heartrending, funny, and instructive at various times. The lovable characters who reside in the graveyard have much to say about life even though they are dead, and Bod proves an apt pupil… This is a good read for all ages (Nilsen 80).
Admittedly, instructive aims accentuated in such a review, are realized by means of insightful metaphors, fairytale symbols, and already traditional implementation of a conventional fantasy world that appears to be a symbolic representation of tendencies within the real one. Therefore, it is logical that in Gaiman’s novel subversion, transgression, and inversion appear central strategies for recreating a particularly figurative reality with its own rules and logic that, nonetheless, interferes with the real world. Not only they intend to demonstrate “the all-encompassing influence of postmodernism in popular genres” (Klapcsik 318) and, in particular, the fact that Gaiman’s “stories frequently double or multiply the narrative perspectives, lay bare the process of storytelling, interweave different language registers, and violate the narrative levels” (Klapcsik 193). They also contribute to the general illustration that postmodern fantasy writings define reality as “as constructed in and through our language, discourses, and semiotic systems” (Klapcsik 193). In The Graveyard Book such a constructed reality shows itself through the author’s insightful playing with the concepts of center and periphery, sacral and profane, social norm and deviation that are transgressed and inverted through a carnivalesque correlation.
A traditional tendency of cognitive categorization inherent of the Western civilization resides into a clear distinguishing between the concepts of high and low, within which the high is usually associated with a more significant social value, whereas low is attributed to the objects of profanity or disgust (Lecon 5). Children’s literature, however, recurs to the categories of high and low to convey symbolic or allegoric meanings embedded in the children’s consciousness that is different from the adult precognition. Which is why such an aesthetical use often seems to be transgressive or somehow chaotic. Occasionally, children’s writings seem to encourage children to break common social taboos and try unconventional or undisciplined behavior. Paradoxically, but at the same time exactly through such an unusual, inversed language that it effectuates its didactic function, demonstrating …
