Azarcon, Raissa L.

08-78596

Comparative Literature 171 THV

October 18, 2011 Professor Emil Flores

On Death: At Deaths Door A GENDER APPROACH ON THE REPRESENTATION OF DEATH IN NEIL GAIMANS SANDMAN SERIES Death and the Language of Fear What comes to mind when you hear the word death? I, for one, thought of a great balustrade where people are in line sharing whispers and donning their best clothes, drinking fine wines and bidding farewells with the sweetest smile they could ever muster. Death is something to look forward to not to shy away from or fear of. However, it was just me, wasnt it? Some people would picture a rather melodramatic scene where bidding farewell would take buckets of tears and would end in grief and much resentment. They hold on to life so much that facing death is almost unimaginable and strikes fear and horror. People who treat death as if an end to an amazing journey are all mistaken. They just dont know much about what death is and how vital it is to embrace death with a straight face.

Our exposure to mass media and popular literature inculcates false beliefs about death. The programs we watch on TV and the commercials we see add up to the paranoia we have of death. Mass media place us in a position where were forced to think that dying is bad, that dying should be prevented at all cost, that we should prevent ourselves from ageing because ageing is the final phase before reaching the peak where our inevitable end awaits us. The era of dietary supplements and wonder juices inhabits our collective psyche and we embraced them with jovial welcome as if taking them alone will give us our most coveted shot at immortality. What people fail to see is that its all fabrication and its all done in the name of money.

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Its undeniable that mankind cringe at the sight of death. Many have attempted to grasp death on its claws, to define death, to set the boundaries of death and to encapsulate death in a time capsule but none of these attempts seemed truly effective for up to the present time, man is still desperately trying to discern the unexplainable. All attempts to hinder death and to live eternally are all done in vain. The elixir of life and the fountain of youth are all but makings of a delusional mind too afraid of what lies ahead in the afterlife.

However, theres this very unique phenomenon that can be observed throughout history which proves all the more mans curiosity and determination to explain death. Its the way man inhales life to death, the way man represents death as a human figure with humanlike qualities. This way, man can easily track down Deaths activities and be more at ease in face of Death. This manner of attributing human-like qualities to an abstract concept like Death is called anthropomorphic personification.

The Many Faces of Death

Anthropomorphic Personification or anthropomorphism seems more like mankinds defense mechanism to lessen, if not completely eliminate, the mental turbulences images of death inflict to collective psyche. It was mans way of giving form to a formless creature or an abstraction, as its commonly referred to, in order to smoother the doubts and to contain societys fear.

Try to look at it this way: imagine yourself having an enemy, an enemy so fierce and so powerful that you cant even defeat it with your most trusted weapon. This enemy is in the periphery, just hanging around but you cant see anything. You dont know when its going to attack, when its going to ravage you. And so with this thought, you decided to find ways to detect his/her presence. You put on a GPS (Global Positioning Device) on his/her suit to track him and to know when hes about to attack. Anthropomorphic Personification serves that kind
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of security which enables mankind to have some sort of control over Death. Man, by nature, is a very controlling creature. He wants to dominate everything and know everything. Hes fuelled with a desire to put everything in his deliverance. To do so, he would try to exhaust every known resource he has to capture that which he finds quite elusive to have.

In this case, the knowledge he has of Death is very scant in quantity. He needs to know more to be able to defeat death and transcend mortality. So he devised many ways to counter what he thought was the most malevolent of all his foes. He treated death as an equal though it was a far cry from truth. He gave form to death; he cloaked death and gave him name, attributions, weapons, etc. In so doing, death became less fearful, less threatening. The more recognizable death is, the more it will be easy for mankind to trace it and understand how it behaves and what course of action it would take. Thus, different tribes, different societies have represented and treated death as someone lifelike. Very paradoxical indeed but true. This was evident across different cultures all throughout history.

As often in religious sects, death comes in the form of an angel whose primary task is to separate the soul from the body at the time of passing. For example, in the Judeo-ChristianIslam tradition, they believe that Azrael is their angel of death. It was said that when a soul sees Azrael, it falls in love and thus, is withdrawn from the body as if by seduction (Wendell, 1996).

In the Greek tradition, Death primarily manifests itself in the form of Thanatos, the twin brother of Morpheus or Dream. Wendell (1996) further told that the desire of Greeks to revere Thanatos was so great that they would opt not to see him as anything gloomy and would rather regard him as a gentle god who came quietly upon the dying. The second manifestation of Death in the Greek tradition came in the form of Charon, the ferryman who carries the souls of the dead across Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.

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Wendell (1996) explained that it is from this culture that we get the concept of paying the ferryman for the passage to the other side. If this ritual of carrying a penny on the corpse is not observed, then there will be a high possibility that the soul will wander around the river and would not find peace at all. People from that period developed strong belief in the existence of Charon that they cultivated a tradition of putting pennies on the eyes of their dead.

Modern Greek folklore modified this belief and transmuted the concept of Charon into a whole new embodiment of Death. Death is no longer the withered ferryman with humour and wit but rather a chauffeur of a death-couch. This notable change occurred because of the perceived neglect of man to the gods and their growing fondness to the material world. It was said that Death left the Land of the Dead and no longer waited there for the arrival of the departed. He travelled to the Land of the Living himself and ventured on the adventure of retrieving souls and bringing them to their rightful destinations. This explained why the personification included a funerary couch pulled by black horses and driven by a faceless driver who is Death himself.

Much the same thing happened in Ancient Rome. Romans personified Death as Orcus, a pale divinity almost devoid of flesh and furnished with immense black wings. Orcus functions as the fetcher of souls. However, he was not the only manifestation of Death in the Roman tradition. They were actually a triumvirate. The other two include Februus and Libitina.

Februus was of Etruscan origin and was said to have a month dedicated for hunting the dead. His was an annual ritual which takes place every 2 nd month of the year, this falls on February, as derived from his name, Februus. Libitina is one of the countless feminine

personifications of death. In Rome particularly, Libitina is hailed as the Goddess of Funerals. Another female personification of death that originated from Rome is Mors. Mors, as compared to Libitina, was more deadly and striking. Wendell (1996) explained that Mors as a goddess was
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not honoured with temples and sacrifices because she portrayed Death as someone inexorable, inaccessible to entreaties and unmoved by prayers and offerings (Wendell, 1996).

The concept of death as having human-like qualities is embraced not only in the Western countries but also in the regions of Asia and the Pacific. In Japan, for instance, people believe in the existence of Yuki-Onne which literally translates to Snow Queen. Yuki-Onnes method of retrieving the dead was as subtle as prickle of a spindle. It was said that she doesnt want to inflict much suffering to the mortal body so she would rather have them froze to numbness than do something terribly brutal, bloody and painful. She was also said to be the one who cuts the cord at lifes end.

In contemporary times, personifications of Death proliferate too and occupy a special place in the belief system of our society. Much of it are found in the books we read, the movies we watch, TV series we follow, and songs we listen to.

The most common name we associate with death is the clichd and all too worn-out Grim Reaper. Grim Reaper is the typical black-hooded, skeletal figure wielding a scythe and ready to sling your life with his razor-sharp blade. Sounds eerie? Well, it better be.

The popularity of Grim Reaper reached increasing heights during the onslaught of bubonic plague in 14th century Europe. This was the time when the rapid spread of a fatal pestilence robbed Europe of so many lives. Bubonic plague changed the way people view death. National Geographic (2009) states that at least 25 million people died in its first initial outbreak and the number continued to flare up as centuries trudge on. Many lives were taken. Death permeated the air. The gloom was everywhere. The collective grief and mourning had greatly affected many writings and paintings produced that time.

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The melancholic feel had induced writers, philosophers, poets, and painters to think of death in a morbid, grim manner. As compared to the earlier anthropomorphisms of death where people represented it as someone benevolent, kind, helpful and friendly, Grim Reaper was nowhere near that kind of ideal. He was scary, frightening and merciless. Grim Reaper screams terror. Grim Reaper is not someone you would want to meet across the street or share a seat with on the subway. Grim Reaper is just plain grim, if you know what I mean.

However, not all contemporary personifications of death resemble that horrifying, cloaked bony figure. In Neil Gaimans Sandman series, a different kind of death emerged. Gaiman fashioned death in a form a woman-- a very attractive, cheerful woman that is. Death here was nothing frightening. In fact, a lot of guys would surely beg to die once theyd get a glimpse of what Death really looks like. Gaimans Death is an appealing, perky, hot, goth chic everyone would want to get to know of. Well, shes that interesting. We cant blame her.

Anatomy of Death

Origins Death comes from a loose-knit, dysfunctional family of seven siblings who, just like her, embody a distinct aspect/concept of mortal life. Collectively, they are called The Endless. They are no gods or patron saints but simply patterns, ideas and repeating motifs that are personified and given human-like attributions. Neil Gaiman has stressed this point when he wrote in the foreword of Sandman: The Endless Nights that The Endless are not to be viewed as gods for gods need to be believed in to exist. He furthered the point by saying that The

Endless will continue to exist whether we believe in them or not simply because they are The Endless.

One carnal rule that every member of The Endless should abide by no matter what relates to the restraints their duties carry. None of them can intervene with the course of things
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and they cannot alter the flow of events. The Endless are constrained to perform in their respective realms and not meddle with the affairs of mortals. They exist only to live true to the concept they embody. They have no right to defy their nature and tweak events to suit their preference and cater to their own interests.

They all have white skin and black hair though some appear paler and more sinister than the rest. However, their appearance may vary according to way the perceiver sees them. No fix physical attribution can be made. How they look to one may not be the same to other.

The Endless spend most of their time fulfilling their duties. For instance, Dream oversees the Dreaming and regulates dreams and inspirations while Deaths task mainly concerns infusing life to newborns and retrieving the souls of the deceased and guiding them to the Land of the Dead. Some like Destiny were more particular to their obligations and more dedicated than others. While the younger Endless like Desire is pretty much lax in her job and would rather treat it as mere play. Seeing catastrophe on her behalf gives her much pleasure and joy. While some other like Destruction did not see the point of his existence anymore and would rather abandon his post than continue his functions with impaired clarity. If in case one of the Endless dies, a replacement is in order with an individual who can assume the same role and responsibility and who can pretty much function as effectively as the one he/she replaced.

Each of the Endless has a certain spot, territory and realm in which he/she reigns sovereign. The Endless are generally uncomfortable traversing and occupying realms other than their own. The reason for this is not stated. But it might be that theyre doing it out of respect to each other. Gaiman did not hint anything about the decrease in power when outside the respective realm though it would, of course, have a bearing on the overall performance of each one of the member. But if in case it is absolutely necessary to visit the realm of another, an Endless will oblige and will do so given that the situation asks for it. But Death is an exception to this rule since Death can go in and out of different realms whenever she needs to.
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In each of their realm, it can be noted that there is a presence of a gallery. Inside the gallery hangs different picture frames signifying the symbol or sigil of each of the Endless. This sigil serves as their primary means to contact each other. They can communicate by holding the sigil and summoning the name of the one they want to speak to. Their exact nature is yet unknown and their ages can never be exactly specified, but one things for sure, they are older than Earth itself and have existed way before Earth presented itself to the living.

What is Death like?

Second of The Endless, Death has always been the perkiest of the nine siblings. Contrary to the nature of her jobthat of guiding the departed to the realm of the spirits, she remains warm and cheerful, almost always having a happy disposition amidst the negative concepts generally attributed to her realm. She is a small, cute goth chick who had a flair for fashion. Its seldom you find her intimidating or appalling since she looks completely arresting in any dress she donned on. As always, Death is the epitome of a seductress, a very beautiful young woman who has the power to entice anyone. Who knows? She might be the reason why courting death itself would not be a matter of doubt for any mortal bachelor alive.

Death has a silver ankh for a sigil. This thing that clings around her pretty neck allows her to communicate with the other Endless. Touching on the historic context, the silver ankh is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics character which symbolizes eternal life. This association is very reflective of Death since death is not only present in the day we breathe our last but on the day we breathed our first. It is her function to infuse life to mortals as well. That being said, every mortal encounters Death at least twice in their lifetimethe day they were born, and on the day they bid life farewell.

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Another thing worth noting about Death is the prominent marking underneath her right eye. This seemingly tribal face tattoo is called the Eye of Horus, another ancient Egyptian symbol which stands for good health, protection, and royal power.

Death also plays a maternal figure to her siblings most particularly to her brooding young brother, Dream. She is Dreams confidante, the one he turns to whenever hes having a tough time deciding on pressing dilemmas or issues. It is Death, too who stops the nonsensical bickering between her younger siblings. She is, in every way, a peacemaker and peace keeper.

Billions of years ago, Deaths personality was very far from what she has now. It was said that before, she was not this happy creature we all came to love. She was, in fact, very dark and sinister. She carried no light or sparkle in her eyes. All she could ever evoke is fear and terror since every living creature doesnt welcome her arrival. They instead tremble at the thought of her for they only see emptiness etched in her face. However, all these changes when Death was given the chance to live as a mortal once every century. This allows her to understand more the nature of mortals and what it feels to live and experience life. The experience made her empathize more with the grief and pain of letting go and of the sorrow of bidding farewell to life. Taking on a mortal role made her taste the bitter tang of living which made her value all the more the job entrusted to her.

Why Death dons skirts?

This gives us an ample time to question why Neil Gaiman personified Death as a woman when, looking back, personifications of death were dominated by male figures. Its very rare that death is represented asexual. At times, it may look like death is indeed genderless, but it only happens when the representation is all in bones and skeletons. It would be hard to detect her sex orientation that way. But when it comes to representations where details are presented, we can easily identify if the death portrayed is a man or a woman. In Gaimans
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Sandman Series, it is no doubt that Death is oh-la-la female. But what is it in Gaimans psyche that pushed him to make his character death into a woman?

We can make intelligent associations of this to other incidences in art and literature where Death is also portrayed as a woman.

In Adorno and Horkheimers Dialectics of Enlightenment, the woman is almost always associated with nature and with biological processes. This intimate connection is seen as a liability and viewed as a sign of weakness. This made men regard women less in relation to themselves. And this perception of women further reinforces the Enlightenment principle that states: The project of Enlightenment is to dominate biological and animal nature because it is perceived as incalculable and contrary to reason, hence, foreign and hostile. (Guthke, 1999)

That being said, women became the embodiment of biological function and unconsciously carry with them the image of nature. The Enlightenment period made men think that they are superior to women and hence, have the right to suppress them and annihilate them. This marginalization experienced by women within the confines of a phallocentric society gave rise to the concept of a woman as horrifying revenant threatening her opponents with nothing short of death (Guthke, 1999). Death is personified as a woman as a consequence of emancipatory aspirations, in other words, as a reaction of the male world to feminism (Guthke, 1999).

Men diabolized women as had history diabolized Eve when Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit.

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This attempt of men to further subjugate women by identifying women to death shows fundamental misogynist tendency. In their minds, women are dead and dont belong to the world. However, the fantasy of a dead woman changes in the nightmare of death-inflicting woman (Guthke, 1999)

To further this point, Simone de Beauvoir claimed that the primordial anxiety of men about the closeness of woman to biological or animal nature reminds men of his own creatureliness and of his own biological origin and therefore of his own less biological death.

This has taken the view that though women has a reputation of bearing life, they also were seen as reminders of mens innate nature, of mens being susceptible and not invincible to the claws of death. Hence, women represent the spontaneity of organic beginning and growth as much as an equally organic decay and physical ending (Guthke, 1999).

On Freudian Perspective Freud explains this archaic and mythological linkage of woman and death, of motherhood and destruction as the natural reaction of men to the inevitable truth that women embodythat of their biological demise and the far-fetched dream of immortality.

Freud argued that this natural inclination to sublimate the truth in favour of a more convenient one falls under the psycho-analytic concept called reaction-formation in which the individual tries to counter the situation or avoids confronting the situation by forming another scenario in his head that seems to agree with his preconceptions and that which doesnt berate or insult his knowledge.

Reaction-formation, as Freud would have it, is acting out the exact opposite of what you feel. It occurs when a person feels a strong urge to do or say something but ends up doing otherwise. For example, a student who has strong feelings of disgust toward his lab partner
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ends up being extra nice and extremely friendly to him. He does this out of the social fear of being branded as a snob or regarded as not fun to be with. In most cases, reaction-formation is done to avoid the social punishment of being criticized and condemned for not doing what is socially-accepted. It is a form of defense mechanism in which the individual seeks to cover up something which he finds socially-unacceptable by adopting an opposite stance towards the very thing that can threaten his ego and ruin his reputation.

This, in turn, ushered us on Freuds essay The Theme of the Three Caskets (1913), where he states:

The Moerae were created as a result of a discovery that warned man that he too is a part of nature and therefore subject to the immutable law of death.

Lets first define what Moerae are. They are ubiquitously found in the pages of Greek myth books and they are sometimes referred to as The Fates or The Parcae. The Moerae are three sisters responsible on deciding the human fate. They determine when life begins, when it ends and what happens in between. They consist of Clotho, the one who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, the one who measured the thread of life; and Atropos, the one who cuts the thread of life. The three sisters, as said Freud, can be compared to different female trio found in Western literature. We can use this comparison to prove our earlier claim that assimilates women to anthropomorphized figure of death and how it was connected to the defense mechanism called reaction-formation.

First, Freud returned to Greek myth and mentioned something about the story of Paris, the possessor of the golden apple which the three goddesses (namely Athena, Hera and Aphrodite) all vied for. Of course, we all know (assuming that were all exposed to Greek myth
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the time we were in secondary school) that Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty, won over the other two deities. Then Freud went on to discuss Cinderella and how Cinderellas beauty and grace surpassed those of her two stepsisters. Then he also mentioned Psyche and how Psyche is hailed as the Aphrodite of the mortals and the fact that shes the fairest among her two older sisters. Lastly, Freud mentioned Cordelia, the youngest daughter of King Lear and who was the least subservient among the three daughters of the king and who showed the least affection towards her father compared to her older sisters, Gonoril and Reagan. The myths and stories Freud took note of have a central theme and that is the involvement of three sisters and of the youngest as the bearer of beauty and grace. It can also be observed that theres always a male figure who plays the role of a judge who always hold in his hands the final verdict as if the three sisters were on trial.

However, it should also be made clear that the third and the youngest woman also had in her peculiar qualities aside from her beauty. She isnt just a pretty face. Her personality should also be taken into consideration. All the mortal maidens aforementioned above (except Aphrodite for she is not a mortal) are always in hiding. Cinderella was kept in the attic and in the dusty kitchen all because her stepmother sees her as a threat. Psyche was kept in seclusion atop a hill because thats what the oracle said she belongs. And Cordelia makes herself unrecognizable, inconspicuous like lead, and remains dumb, she loves in silence,(Freud, 1913). All the maidens live in concealment and are said to be dumbed. In here though, when we say dumb we dont mean stupid or unintelligent. In Medieval English, a dumb is someone who temporarily lacks the capacity to speak for himself or one who is bereft of the power of speech. Hence, when we regard the three maidens here as dumbed, it goes to say that they are live in silence and, though has an urge to speak out, has remained mummed about their feelings and desires.

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Freud then equates concealment to dumbness. From there, he applied psycho-analysis and claimed that in dreams, dumbness muteness or silence is the common representations of death. He stated that:

It would certainly be possible to collect further evidence from fairy tales that dumbness is to be understood as representing death. These indications would lead us to conclude that the third one of the sisters between whom the choice is made is the dead woman. But she may be something else as well, namely Death itself, the Goddess of Death. (Freud, 1913)

So drawing from that point, if the third sister is the Goddess of Death, the sisters can then be identified as The Moerae of The Fates, and the third of whom is Atropos, the inexorable one. But if we go back to the Judgment of Paris, the third sister is represented as Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love; in the tale of Psyche and Cupid, she is a mortal who owns a face of a goddess; in King Lear, she is the loyal daughter; and in Cinderella, she is a beautiful young lady who possesses a heart of an angel. It is only in the case of The Moerae that the third sister takes on a threatening stance and a rather beguiling embodiment of a woman. The third sister here represents death, personifies death and is death herself. But in all the other myths and stories, she took on the role of a delicate, dainty woman with a radiating beauty.

The same happened to Neil Gaimans representation of death. Gaimans Death is beautiful and not in a way hideous and frightening. Gaiman has managed to make her look both as a maternal figure to the other Endless and as a tempting seductress. To validate this, Neil Gaiman said so himself that:

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I didn't want a Death who agonized over her role, or who took a grim delight in her job, or who didn't care. I wanted a Death that I'd like to meet, in the end. Someone who would care. Like her. (Gaiman, The Introduction to A Death Gallery)

From there, the reaction-formation stance that we are trying to establish midway in this paper has successfully surfaced itself. The rebellion of men and their denial to accept the truth embodied by The Moerae has led them to subject women in this kind of imagery. Men made death less ambivalent, less threatening, and more acceptable.

On a final note, Gaiman, as a master storyteller, had opted for a female, perky, goth girl for a grim character to defy the traditional way of portraying death and spice things up. As Guthke (1999) had said the male and gender-neutral incarnations are less arresting. So its only natural that Gaiman had it that way. Death of the Endless is desired as much as feared. Death of the Endless is a psychopomp that is eroticized, and who has managed to transcend other anthropomorphized representations of death by embodying three significant roles: that of being a maternal figure (where death is seen as every mortals redemption and lee way from suffering), being an object of the gaze and sexual fantasies and third, taking on the role of Mother Earth to which the earthly body of men will return, decompose and reach eventual decay.

***

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Bibliography
Guthke, Karl Siegfried. The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Wendell, Leilah. Encounters With Death: A Compendium of Anthropomorphic Personifications of Death from Historical to Present Day Phenomenon. New Orleans, LA. Westgate Press. 1996. Harris, William. How the Grim Reaper Works. HowStuffWorks. 8 October 2011. < http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/grim-reaper6.htm> Reaction Formation. ChangingMinds.Org. 8 October 2011. < http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/coping/reaction_formation.htm> Freud, Sigmund. The Theme of the Three Caskets. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913).

The Endless Members. ComicVine. 8 October 2011. < http://www.comicvine.com/the-endless/6540483/members/>

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