Academic paper started
Today I began work on a paper for submission to “The Sandman Papers,” a book of essays examining the Sandman, edited by Joe Sanders. I’m just going to take a baby step from my new area of expertise, to examine the parallel challenges from Season of Mists. Morpheus, goaded by his siblings, first challenges Lucifer for the soul of a mortal lover. Later, the demon Azazel challenges Morpheus in turn for the key to the gates of hell. There are numerous similarities between these challenges, but one glaring difference: Morpheus eventually gains satisfaction, and frees his Nada, his lover, while Azazel not only fails to get the key, but loses two prisoners and its freedom in the bargain.
Whether Gaiman intended so strong a parallel or not – and I feel he must have – the success of one and failure of the other make the two attempts read as a “do-and-don’t” list of how to go about confronting a deity.
Before I can really sit down to the keyboard, of course, I need to study the source material very, very carefully. Not just Season of Mists, but The Kindly Ones as well, since just how successful we judge Morpheus to be depends on how much importance we attach to his ultimate fate. So many events stemming directly from the key figure in Morpheus’s demise that we have to wonder how far Lucifer may have engineered it. If Lucifer did mastermind Morpheus’s destruction, then the lord of the Dreaming can only have won a partial victory.
It’s interesting how much more you see when you force yourself to read word by word. I have to be careful, or I'll start seeing things that aren't really there.