Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld by Linda Washington & Carrie Pyykkonen

Author:Linda Washington & Carrie Pyykkonen [Washington, Linda & Pyykkonen, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-08-16T21:00:00+00:00

YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO: HOW SOME PERSONIFICATIONS ARE DEFINED

“It’s not who I am underneath … But what I do that defines me,” declares Batman in Batman Begins.104 Some of the other personifications in Discworld could say the same thing.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of Sand

Who is the Sandman? A being who puts people to sleep without boring them. If you read the classic graphic novels on the Sandman—Preludes and Nocturnes being one of them—written by Neil Gaiman (Pratchett’s coauthor for Good Omens) and illustrated by Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcolm Jones III, you might feel that that series provides the definitive portrayal of the Sandman. He is Dream—the personification of dreams a.k.a. Morpheus. (Morpheus in the Matrix movies had the opposite goal: to wake people up.) Dream, the younger brother of Death (a Goth-looking female), is one of the Endless—not the kind to hit people on the head with sandbags full of sand, like the Discworld Sandman does. Gaiman’s Sandman is someone who could be summoned like the Death of Discworld—by an occult rite that traps him for several decades until he escapes.

Even if you haven’t read Gaiman’s graphic novels, you might know that Morpheus comes from Greek mythology. He’s the most powerful of the gods of dreams (the Oneroi) and the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep. Ovid wrote about the family in Metamorphoses. Morpheus’s brothers—Phobeter and Phantasos—also personify dreams.

Supposedly, the Sandman of mythology sprinkles dust in the eyes of children to make them fall asleep. “Ready for a visit from the Sandman, Rachel? Close your eyes.” Well, that’s what parents tell their kids. Wishful thinking. Speaking of wishful thinking, back in the 1950s a song called “Mr. Sandman,” written by Pat Ballard, described some thoughts about the Sandman’s job. It was popular in the United States and Great Britain.

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