Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

“On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers” (Adlai E. Stevenson). Humans, as a specie, have an undeniable desire for companionship and a sense of belonging, whether this be through various relationships or through a sense of community. Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller and winner of the Newbery Medal (2009), Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book portrays a non-conventional take on the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child”. In this coming of age story, a living boy by name of Nobody Owens is taken under the wing of an array of interesting characters including ghosts, a werewolf and a guardian who is neither dead nor alive and given the Freedom of the Graveyard after his family was murdered by the man Jack.

Neil Gaiman uses the theme of community and reinvents the old proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” to demonstrate the importance of a community’s role in raising a child. It does in fact take a graveyard to raise a child. To begin, a safe and stimulating environment is necessary for any child to develop and prosper. The surroundings in which the youth is raised has a great impact on the early psychological development of the child. Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book plunges readers into a fantastical setting that is ideal for Bod to flourish and grow as a human being. Since Bod is raised in a graveyard and not in contact with other living beings, the graveyard folk make a great effort to provide Bod with a safe, challenging and supportive setting. The graveyard is a village and a lively one at that, it is a safe place for Nobody to develop into a young man. In fact, according to his guardian Silas it is the only safe place; “You aren’t allowed out of the graveyard […] because it’s only in the graveyard that we can keep you safe”(Gaiman, 37). The community as a whole keeps Bod safe by providing a safe location in which they

Neil Gaiman uses this ideology to prove that it does take a village to raise the youth. Everyone in the community has an influence on Bod as he is the graveyard’s first student. A child’s brain is like a sponge, it absorbs everything and anything, this includes things they see and things they experience. Nobody Owens is a very curious young man with an undeniable thirst for knowledge that the graveyard folk help fuel and appease through their teachings; “We should do our best to satisfy your interest in stories and books and the world” (93). The graveyard implements an education system in which resembles an actual school. Amongst the graveyard folk is an array of teachers, including Letitia Borrows and Mr. Pennyworth who teach Bod important things such as writing and geography. On the other hand, he has Miss Lupescu who acts as a teacher but teaches him things that will help him survive in the world Gaiman has created. Bod learns how to fade, to haunt and learns about all the different types of people who live in this fictional world; “I’ve learned a lot in this graveyard,”( Page number). Moreover, a child doesn’t learn uniquely from the education system, they learn from observing and experiencing things for themselves as well as from interactions with others. Bod learns important life lessons and gets advice from all the characters in the book, including the bad ones. Silas