His Graveyard made me think and well.. cry.

I have heard millions of praises for Neil Gaiman and after reading Stardust, I had a pretty good idea as to why that is. So, after countless of relentless nagging from my Ate to actually read some more of his books, I conceded.

Just earlier, I finished reading The Graveyard. It was enchanting to the point where you would ignore other plans just to finish it. I would not prattle about every detail, but this was a book ought to be read by all ages—well young adults and above.  The book was genius per se, but the message and how it was conveyed left me to tears of utter amazement.

Nobody Owens, due to the tragic murder of his family when he was only a year old, was adopted by the ghosts of the graveyard. He was assigned parents and a guardian-an esoteric guardian who disappeared weeks at a time due to a more mysterious job. Needless to say, everyone in the area became his friend while he grew up. He had different best friends to adhere to his age some dead and one well, alive--which was amusing yet weirdly realistic.  The adventures were filled with lessons and would just leave you stirring. The ending was both sad and auspicious that it branched to different realizations as well as interpretation.

Here’s mine.

In a dissected manner of viewing it:

Personally, what Nobody Owens experienced in the graveyard was in reality, a childhood spent in a small town where dreams were hardly viewed as possible except to a few some. The graveyard had rules, boundaries and limits. It had set an allusion that what lied beyond their place was dangerous and better off unravelled especially of a boy who, when he was young, a product of tragedy of that world. It’s like, a typical family raising their children in an overly safe manner.  Although, children were guileless, spirited and spontaneous that they tend to break these rules to set on adventures that they thought weren’t consequential. Bod had these adventures and these things he took as experience moulded him for the future.

The fact that his guardian/s kept their work clandestine was for me, how the ones we love are doing everything without our knowing to keep us safe; that even though you are gapped by years of experience and intelligence, where their actions are directed are to your own good.

During his stay in the graveyard, he had a chance to go to the real world; here he discovered both positive and negative things. He first met greed, avarice, anger etc..; he also learned things he once thought were fallacious or fictitious were actually real. He felt love as well as heartache. It was already clear to him that a person to like you deeply would only be true once you are accepted as who you are.  He was also taught that what the dead could remember, the ones who are alive possibly could not. This particularly stroked me, as the dead only became figments with their memories intact while people live on hoping to forget the tragedy of death.

No matter how peaceful a place was, trouble would always find you. The good thing was, by the time evil caught up with Bod, he already knew how to deal with it. Time was his friend and it was kind enough to show him how he was the only one changing and to be appropriate, he needed an environment that could be par with his own.

So when the graveyard, the adventures it had given him and the people who stayed with him decided he was ready for the world, he took this as a chance to be great. It was up to him if he wanted to bring the memories of his childhood with him; if these people should always be his inspiration; if he would again visit the graveyard.

Our childhood is like the graveyard- it is nothing but buried memories to some, while to others, it is where they build their tombstones made of gold—ones they can go back to in order to get nostalgic inspiration.  The graveyard gave life to the few years of our life, but it isn’t the certain life to live; for someday, we will leave the confines of that graveyard and live real. It is up to us how to use the graveyard in the future or if not to use it at all. When we leave, we can bring some of the things it gave us, or we can erase the graveyard in our minds and start from scratch. It all depends on our graveyards.

Or maybe this is the simple message:

The graveyard is the history of everything in our life, and it will let us go after they have completely moulded us for real life.

THAT IS ALL! Thank you, Neil Gaiman!