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Neil Gaiman's Reflections On Destiny, And Delirium: Destiny?

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Introduction Neil Gaiman compiled The Sandman, a succession of adult comics written and published in weekly installments from 1988 through 1996 into a book. Each book documents different journeys of the Endless: seven personified beings whose names reflect their function: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair and Desire (who are twins), and Delirium (in that order). Each Endless possesses the qualities Gaiman perceives these abstract personifications to have. In this paper, I concentrate on Destiny, Dream, and Delirium : Destiny (depicted as a blind, robed monk of indeterminate age), an aloof and secretive steward who guards the Book of Fate inhabits a realm that is orderly despite the timeless intersections contained in his book; Dream …show more content…

One of the functions of The Sandman, to explore the interrelationship between rationality and irrationality especially in conjunction with dreams and delirium, is to bend space and time. Dream undertakes this in dreamland while Delirium accomplishes this is wakeland. In his 1999 essay “Reflections on Myth,” Gaiman approaches this interrelationship when he introduces new mythologies: urban legends, serial killers interacting with everyday people, and icons such as musicians and politicians whom modern people mythologize. From there, he meditates on the nature of mythology and its connection to dreaming, stating that the new mythologies of magic and science and numbers and fame […] have their function, all the ways we try to make sense of the world we inhabit, a world in which there are few, if any, easy answers. Every day we attempt to understand it. And every night we close our eyes and go to sleep, and for a few hours, quietly and safely, we go stark staring mad. …show more content…

One trait, disjointed language, proves to intensify the other Endless’ perceptions of Delirium’s intelligence. Gaiman constructs Delirium to possess a mental disorder rather than mental illness. By remaining in a constant state of flux, represented by her shifting appearance, the multiple-colored speech bubbles, her different colored eyes, and her constantly changing clothing, Delirium demonstrates chaos more than sickness. Her shadow, which is solid, never reflects her physical shape and is solid. [In looking at delirium as a waking state versus a sleeping one, Foucault maintains the classical period perceived

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