A Game of You
The fifth installment in the Sandman series is all about identity. The way we perceive ourselves. The way other people perceive us. The things we hold back and the reasons we choose to do that. The ways we declare ourselves to the world or hide ourselves from it. The things we have control over and the things we don't and how those interact to create a picture we call "me".
The story focuses on Barbie, who is trying to redefine herself in the aftermath of The Doll's House. After Dream destroyed the vortex that was Rose Walker, Barbie's life more or less fell apart. The two biggest indicators of this are that she stopped dreaming (and lost a big part of her internal world) and she divorced her husband (and stopped being seen as one half of the perfect couple). She's living in a crappy apartment in NYC, trying to figure out who she wants to be. And that's when her dreams come back to find her.
Barbie's dreamworld, populated by her childhood toys and ruled over by a malicious being known as a Cuckoo, is a part of herself that she's been denying for the last few years. Her arc sees her learning to embrace it and then let it go. This is a part of her past that she needs to figure out how to integrate with sense of self so she can move into the future.
In the real world, Barbie is surrounded by people who have secrets of their own. And the degree to which they have control over those secrets - whether they choose to keep them or feel forced to keep them - informs their security in their own identity. But the characters who have the most control over their own self-image, Thessaly and the Cuckoo, are also presented as the most self-serving. Not evil exactly. The Cuckoo especially is revealed to merely be acting within it's own nature. But both are so practiced at keeping secrets, at maintaining a division between their inner self and the face they show the world, that they end up isolated.
The other characters struggle with sharing their inner worlds. There's always the possibility of rejection. Wanda's entire family refuses to acknowledge her gender. Hazel risks losing the love of Foxglove when she gets pregnant. Even the homeless woman is mocked for revealing her fear of dogs. But it's only through this sharing, risky as it is, that they're able to make human connections. Acceptance leads to closeness and a surer sense of self.
Acceptance is the key. As Barbie muses at the end, everyone's filled with secret worlds. You can never know another person, not entirely. And so it does no good to condemn them. Better to withhold judgement and try to understand, as much as the other person is willing to let you. And bit by bit, you'll understand each other. It's not enough to know yourself. We have to make the effort to know each other, too.
And so we come back to Morpheus, who exists on the edges of this tale. Like Thessaly and the Cuckoo, he has a strong sense of self. Like them, he's proud and inflexible. And like them, he's becoming increasingly isolated. Morpheus has to learn how to let others in. He cracked that door open with Nada in the last book. Alianora here reminds him of his ability to do so. But it's a two-way street. Connecting with other people means re-evaluating your sense of self, too. And the question remains whether he's going to be able to do that.
The story focuses on Barbie, who is trying to redefine herself in the aftermath of The Doll's House. After Dream destroyed the vortex that was Rose Walker, Barbie's life more or less fell apart. The two biggest indicators of this are that she stopped dreaming (and lost a big part of her internal world) and she divorced her husband (and stopped being seen as one half of the perfect couple). She's living in a crappy apartment in NYC, trying to figure out who she wants to be. And that's when her dreams come back to find her.
Barbie's dreamworld, populated by her childhood toys and ruled over by a malicious being known as a Cuckoo, is a part of herself that she's been denying for the last few years. Her arc sees her learning to embrace it and then let it go. This is a part of her past that she needs to figure out how to integrate with sense of self so she can move into the future.
In the real world, Barbie is surrounded by people who have secrets of their own. And the degree to which they have control over those secrets - whether they choose to keep them or feel forced to keep them - informs their security in their own identity. But the characters who have the most control over their own self-image, Thessaly and the Cuckoo, are also presented as the most self-serving. Not evil exactly. The Cuckoo especially is revealed to merely be acting within it's own nature. But both are so practiced at keeping secrets, at maintaining a division between their inner self and the face they show the world, that they end up isolated.
The other characters struggle with sharing their inner worlds. There's always the possibility of rejection. Wanda's entire family refuses to acknowledge her gender. Hazel risks losing the love of Foxglove when she gets pregnant. Even the homeless woman is mocked for revealing her fear of dogs. But it's only through this sharing, risky as it is, that they're able to make human connections. Acceptance leads to closeness and a surer sense of self.
Acceptance is the key. As Barbie muses at the end, everyone's filled with secret worlds. You can never know another person, not entirely. And so it does no good to condemn them. Better to withhold judgement and try to understand, as much as the other person is willing to let you. And bit by bit, you'll understand each other. It's not enough to know yourself. We have to make the effort to know each other, too.
And so we come back to Morpheus, who exists on the edges of this tale. Like Thessaly and the Cuckoo, he has a strong sense of self. Like them, he's proud and inflexible. And like them, he's becoming increasingly isolated. Morpheus has to learn how to let others in. He cracked that door open with Nada in the last book. Alianora here reminds him of his ability to do so. But it's a two-way street. Connecting with other people means re-evaluating your sense of self, too. And the question remains whether he's going to be able to do that.
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