Neil Gaiman Themes

Connecting a Children’s Book to Modern America

Neil Gaiman was born in Hampsire, UK, in 1960. Gaiman is currently alive and lives in the United States. One of his most known work is a comic book series for DC comics called “Sandman.” Writing this series established him as a modern comic writer. This truly started his career as a writer and got him off the ground. He now considered “one of the top ten living post-modern writers and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama.” (Butler) Gaiman is an extremely well-versed writer he even writes children stories like “Odd and the Frost Giants.” He writes children’s books because even though he is well known for his adult fiction he believes that

Also, at the end when Odd explains to the frost giant that he does not have to be in Asgard if he does not want to be. This theme is very important to real life as well, letting people be who they are is a common theme in America today. The gay pride movement throughout the United States in recent years has been a point for people of the LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transsexual, and questioning, to get married and achieve all the rights that straight people enjoy. The year 2002 marks when same sex marriage was legalized allowing men and woman to legal marry other people of the same sex. When this law was passed gay and lesbian couples were able to get married, and around the United States the LGBTQ community were incredibly happy and were now able to be what they wanted to be and do what they want to do. After this law was passed, allowing homosexual couples to be married, being part of the LGBTQ umbrella became normalized and people have slowly started to accept the LGBTQ community increasingly as time passes. This acceptance has allowed millions of people to “come out of the closet,” thus allowing them to be who they want to be. Social acceptance is still an

When thinking about Asian stereotypes people think intelligent or they can think bad at driving. When thinking about frost giant culture in the book suggest frost giants are ruthless tricksters who wanted to take Asgard from the gods, but the leader of the frost giants did not really want to be in Asgard at all he hated it. He thought “out witting Loki…besting Thor…banishing Odin” (Gaiman) would bring him happiness but in the end it did not. When people think of men they could think aggressive or people could think strong and caring. This doubles for the book because Odd and the Frost Giants takes place in a Norse Viking town, and stereotypically Vikings are blood hungry human monsters who rape and pillage. Odd and the Frost Giants goes against this stereotype by making the village people calm and rather boring. When we learn about Odd’s father we learn that he died no in the glory of a great battle, but because he tried to save a pony and died in the process. This concept of stereotyping culture is infuriating today because when people assume things about other cultures or race they tend to treat them differently leading to a hostile environment. Making assumptions about someone’s culture has the chance to lead you down the path of serotyping, and although stereotypes can be positive it is better to get to know the person. Another form of stereotyping that goes on today is