The Sandman, Volume 7, Brief Lives

The Sandman, Volume 7, Brief Lives-Neil Gaiman

How I found this book: At the comic book store in Monrovia, because Borders doesn’t always have the number I am looking for.

Setting: Circa 1994

Main Characters:

Dream/Morpheus: The personification of dreams, and one of the Endless, he has come off yet another nasty break up when his sister, Delirium, decides she needs to find their long-lost brother, Destruction.

Delirium: The personification of delirium, she is a rather confused, muddled character, who is a hodgepodge of all manner of random ideas, some insightful, some bizarre. At one time in her existence she was delight, but something happened to cause her to change. Delirium feels the strong need to find her older brother, Destruction, and is trying to recruit Dream to help.

Destruction: The younger brother of Dream, he abandoned his realm some time before and hasn’t ever returned. It is discovered that he is currently living on a Mediterranean island, not far from the severed, but still living head of his nephew. His currently incarnation is that of a large, muscular, handsome, red-haired man, who attempts to create art, and lives with a dog with which he converses, named Barnabas.

Orpheus: The son of Dream/Morpheus and Calliope, he once mourned the woman he loved so greatly that he asked his aunt, Death, to send him to the land of Hades to fetch her. He fails in his task, and was eventually torn to pieces by the Bacchae, the frenzied worshipers of Bacchus, who tore him to pieces, leaving only his head alive, unable to have his aunt even aid him in finding death after her previous assistance. Orpheus has had other adventures, including being found in France by Johanna Constantine in a previous episode, but it is currently housed at a temple in Greece and protected by a family there. He is one of the few people who know where his uncle, Destruction, actually resides.

Plot: Delirium wants to see her older brother Destruction, one of the Endless, who deserted his domain years ago and hasn’t been seen since. While the twins Desire and Despair refuse to offer assistance, Dream, fresh off one of his notoriously bad love affairs, offers to help his little sister, if nothing else to get him out of the house. He enters into the waking world with her, only to find that this ‘simple little jaunt’ will reveal not only where their erstwhile brother is, but much about him and how he deals with change. In the end, Dream is forced to make a horrible promise, one that will effect him greatly in the future.

Themes:

Adapting to change: As the Endless go, by rule, they are everlasting. That isn’t to say they are immutable, especially as the perceptions of them change with time and with the cultures that perceive them. We see this most clearly when different characters see Dream in different physical forms. Change happens, and either you roll with it…or you let it roll over you. We see both these aspects in the story, where Destruction has learned to adapt, to change with the times, and acknowledging those changes, while Dream, who is much more hidebound and conservative, can not and disagrees with his brother on this point. It is this inability to change that Dream is beginning to realize is his greatest flaw. Though he recognizes he has changed a great deal from what he once was, he also knows he can not change enough to be what the Dreaming demands of him.

Facing up to the things you’ve done: Dream has had a string of bad relationships, both personal and familial, and all of them tend to come and bite him in the ass. His love matches always end badly it seems, and his relationship with his son takes a turn when he refuses to help his only child after his wife’s death and then subsequent mauling at the hands of the Bacchae. Compassion wasn’t something Morpheus was good at for a long time. His relationship with his siblings hasn’t been much better, as Desire still hates him for whatever reasons Desire has at the moment, and Destruction and he have argued both over a period of time about their respective roles, and have never agreed to disagree. Dream for the most part tries to ignore those that he’s hurt, though since his release from imprisonment in the first book, he’s softened a great deal. The fact that not only has he tried to make amends with his old loves, (Calliope and Nada), but he even agrees in this story to go with Delirium to find the brother he’s on the outs with shows a changing level of compassion that Dream didn’t always have for his brother. And by granting his son the one thing he wanted most, knowing what it could and would mean for him, was a huge step for Dream. See, he can change a little….but it’s the big change that maybe he can’t manage so much.

No matter what, family is family: As much as I would like to ignore my irritating brother or the grandmother-from-Hades I have, I have to admit that they are my family, and that I am connected, and perhaps at times do have a certain level of responsibility. Dream has to admit these facts too…even if he doesn’t really like it.

Every book sucks somewhere: If you are a bit confused in reading this as to why it is Destruction did what he did, don’t worry, so am I. It took me a second reading, and then Wikipedia to understand that part of the story was that Destruction decided he could just leave his realms running themselves well enough, and he could do whatever he wanted. I guess that’s just the closet optimist in me talking. Anyway, that’s something I think they may have wanted to make a bit more explicit.

What did I like: I loved the detail in which we start to see the complex relationship of the Endless and their family, and the weird, kooky, disfunctionality of it all. Like humanity itself, they can’t ever get along for long, and small slights blow up into decades of centuries of no talking, as they are waiting for the ‘other one’ to make the first sign of a reconciliation. Like a typical family, they often can’t stand being around one another, but realize that they are all connected because of who and what they are.

How would I rate this wormy book: This is another FAT WORM, and a great way to read up on more of what is up with Morpheus, his history, and his family.