Only a body “who nobody owns:” Adolescent identity in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

<p>Neil Gaiman’s <em>The Graveyard Book</em> presents a child, Nobody (Bod) Owens, who grows up in a graveyard with ghosts and a vampire as primary guardians. While Bod is not technically an adolescent for the entire novel, he is constantly struggling with adolescent themes—primarily being in a liminal state—and the graveyard provides a heterotopian space for Bod to escape “normal” society and to develop an “othered” identity. Gaiman’s strategic use of monsters reflects adolescence as he presents the repressive human organization, the “Jacks of All Trades,” trying to control society, while Bod becomes a queer monster/human hybrid representing the resistant individual. It is as Bod transitions between the worlds of the living and the dead that he becomes aware of how he does not fully belong to either, and he must come to terms with his own liminal otherness. Gaiman displays how an adolescent can develop and grow to become anyone he wants, even Nobody.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English Language and Literature

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Millet, Aleesa Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ramona Caponegro, Ph.D., Chair
• Annette Wannamaker, Ph.D.

• adolescent identity
• liminal
• monsters
• Neil Gaiman
• Otherness
• The Graveyard Book
• Children's and Young Adult Literature

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.emich.edu/theses/704

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.emich.edu:theses-2083