Sandman: Dream Country
The third installment in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is a
collection of short stories, rather than a cohesive arc. However, a line
from Death in the final issue helps tie all of the stories together
thematically
Calliope: In the first tale, an author kidnaps the youngest muse and holds her hostage. He rapes her in an effort to get ideas and grows prosperous on his projects. She appeals to Morpheus to free her. He does this by flooding the author's mind with ideas, so many that he can't sort through them in any meaningful way. After Calliope is released, she elects to retire to the dream realm, to continue only in the minds of men.
This may be my favorite story of the four collected in this volume. It's certainly the most haunting. The images of Calliope, naked and starving, will stay with you for a long time. The punishment Dream visits on the author is wholly satisfying. It's possibly my favorite action of his in the entire series. But the story is also graphic and disturbing. Maybe that's why it sticks in your mind so clearly.
A Dream of a Thousand Cats: After a cat's owners drown her kittens, she beseeches Dream to help her seek vengeance, justice, or revelation. He is able to offer her revelation by providing her with the knowledge that at one time cats ruled the world. Humans were mere playthings. We fed and groomed the cats and they hunted us for sport. But one night a thousand humans dreamed a new world into existence, one in which humans were the dominant species. The cat becomes convinced that if she can convince a thousand cats to dream the old world, it will come back into being.
The interesting thing about this story is that there's no indication whether Dream provides the cat with true or false knowledge. Traditionally one enters the dream realm through on of two gates. The gate of horn provides true dreams while the gate of ivory provides false ones. But the cat enters the realm through a desert of bones. I cannot figure out what this means about the dream she has.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: In this story, Dream commissions Shakespeare to write a play about the Fae. He invites Queen Ttitania and her subjects to view the premiere of the play where the comment about the actors' portrayals of themselves. Dream says he did this because he didn't want the Fae to be completely forgotten once they leave our world for good, which they do after the play concludes.
I'm sure this story is excellent. After all, it's the only comic ever to win the World Fantasy Award for short story. But I'm not terribly familiar with the play in question. Reading this issue, I always feel like I'm missing half the story.
Facade: The final issue concerns a forgotten superhero: Element Girl (AKA Rainie). The sun god, Ra, gave her the power to transform her body into any element. When we see her, she has become an outcast, never even leaving her apartment. The story deals with depression, isolation and Rainie's desire to die and inability to do so. She finds comfort not from Dream, but from Death who happens to be passing by. This is another story where I feel like I'm missing a little something because I'm not well-versed on the DC canon.
The common thread throughout the stories is the dying mythologies. What happens to gods when they're forgotten? How long do ideas live on in dreams? And can they make a comeback?
[M]ythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you.Each of the stories concerns an old mythology. Beliefs and figures that have passed into the realm of stories.
Calliope: In the first tale, an author kidnaps the youngest muse and holds her hostage. He rapes her in an effort to get ideas and grows prosperous on his projects. She appeals to Morpheus to free her. He does this by flooding the author's mind with ideas, so many that he can't sort through them in any meaningful way. After Calliope is released, she elects to retire to the dream realm, to continue only in the minds of men.
This may be my favorite story of the four collected in this volume. It's certainly the most haunting. The images of Calliope, naked and starving, will stay with you for a long time. The punishment Dream visits on the author is wholly satisfying. It's possibly my favorite action of his in the entire series. But the story is also graphic and disturbing. Maybe that's why it sticks in your mind so clearly.
A Dream of a Thousand Cats: After a cat's owners drown her kittens, she beseeches Dream to help her seek vengeance, justice, or revelation. He is able to offer her revelation by providing her with the knowledge that at one time cats ruled the world. Humans were mere playthings. We fed and groomed the cats and they hunted us for sport. But one night a thousand humans dreamed a new world into existence, one in which humans were the dominant species. The cat becomes convinced that if she can convince a thousand cats to dream the old world, it will come back into being.
The interesting thing about this story is that there's no indication whether Dream provides the cat with true or false knowledge. Traditionally one enters the dream realm through on of two gates. The gate of horn provides true dreams while the gate of ivory provides false ones. But the cat enters the realm through a desert of bones. I cannot figure out what this means about the dream she has.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: In this story, Dream commissions Shakespeare to write a play about the Fae. He invites Queen Ttitania and her subjects to view the premiere of the play where the comment about the actors' portrayals of themselves. Dream says he did this because he didn't want the Fae to be completely forgotten once they leave our world for good, which they do after the play concludes.
I'm sure this story is excellent. After all, it's the only comic ever to win the World Fantasy Award for short story. But I'm not terribly familiar with the play in question. Reading this issue, I always feel like I'm missing half the story.
Facade: The final issue concerns a forgotten superhero: Element Girl (AKA Rainie). The sun god, Ra, gave her the power to transform her body into any element. When we see her, she has become an outcast, never even leaving her apartment. The story deals with depression, isolation and Rainie's desire to die and inability to do so. She finds comfort not from Dream, but from Death who happens to be passing by. This is another story where I feel like I'm missing a little something because I'm not well-versed on the DC canon.
The common thread throughout the stories is the dying mythologies. What happens to gods when they're forgotten? How long do ideas live on in dreams? And can they make a comeback?
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