Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Only A Body “Who Nobody Owns:” Adolescent Identity In Neil Gaiman’S The Graveyard Book, Aleesa Marie Millet

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book 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. …