If this isn’t literature, nothing is.
So writes Peter Straub, in the wise and wistful afterword of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Brief Lives. Volume 7 of the Sandman series is the climax, the cataclysmic meeting of irresistible forces, and the most straightforward and consciously crafted of all the Sandman series. I’ll warn you when we go into spoiler country, because we’ll have to do that. But not yet.
Gaiman doesn’t dumb down his material, and he doesn’t provide a reader’s guide. He doesn’t make it easy. His family of the Endless depict concepts that exist as allegorical constructs, “wave patterns,” as the prodigal sibling puts it. They’re endless; they do not change. They predate humans, they predate gods, and they’ll be around long after both humans and gods are memories. If you can envision eternity, you can envision the Endless.
And yet, they also function as a family. Destiny is dour and humorless, the ultimate eldest sibling, heavy on responsibility and dismissive of the antics of the younger kids. Death is wise and warm; she’s the one who is most aware of and least affected by the family dysfunction. Dream takes himself far too seriously—he’s all about rules and responsibility; in fact, in Preludes and Nocturnes, once he’s accomplished his quest, he’s adrift and depressed until Death reminds him that he has his job to do. The restoration of his realm takes up a good bit of the action in the first half of the cycle. Despair is incredibly sensitive and insecure, while the androgynous Desire is the closest thing this work has to a villain—selfish, proud, powerful, petty, vain. And Delirium, poor tormented Delirium, has the attention span of a toddler, speaks in non-sequiturs and delivers the most profound of truths. When the kids get together, is there any wonder that fights break out?
Then there’s the prodigal, Destruction. Brief Lives is at least half his story.
Every one of the Endless defines its opposite. In other words, we can envision—we can encompass—the opposite of each state by considering the qualities of that very state. Destiny defines free will in that, without free will, destiny would have no meaning. Death defines life; Dream defines reality, Desire antipathy, Despair hope, Delirium sanity.
Destruction defines creativity. The Endless are unchanging, eternal. But Destruction, by his very nature, is an agent of change, in both positive and negative senses. The paradox doesn’t appear to bother him, not when we see him in flashbacks, whether speaking gently with Despair or helping Delight through her transition to Delirium, and not when we meet him in the present. Of all the Endless, he’s the one who is most aware of the ephemeral nature of eternity, the illusion of permanence. Just as Death is the most lively of the Endless, Destruction is the best-natured. It’s his misfortune that his peers are most unwilling to recognize the inevitability of change, which is central to his nature.
Delirium asks Morpheus for three words, the first “for the precise moment when you realize that you’ve actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago,” the second “the word for forgetting the name of someone when you want to introduce them to someone else at the same time you realize you’ve forgotten the name of the person you’re introducing them to as well,” and the third, “the word for things not being the same always. You know, I’m sure there is one, isn’t there? There must be a word for it...the thing that lets you know time is happening.”
For the third word, Morpheus answers, “Change.” Delirium says, “Oh. I was afraid of that.”
Here Begin the Spoilers
Delirium needs a change. She misses her lost brother and decides she wants him back. The change she wants is a restoration of what used to be—the family that she misses. Desire and Despair won’t help her find him; Desire is utterly uninterested, and Despair, although she doesn’t dare to help, remembers Destruction’s kindness (he’s the only one who ever kissed her and called her pretty) and it sends her into a powerful funk.
Dream is in a funk of his own. His latest love affair has ended badly, and his histrionics have everyone in the castle scurrying for higher ground.
For selfish reasons he agrees to help Delirium, which provides the chance for Morpheus and his sister to road-trip in America, seeking Destruction, to hilarious and horrific ends. When Morpheus realizes their quest comes with a body count, he cuts it off but, with an impulse he doesn’t entirely understand (and an assist from Death), picks the quest back up, this time seriously. It costs him.
Brief Lives is the volume where epic story becomes tragedy, tragedy in the classical sense. Morpheus is now trapped; he can neither prevent nor forestall the forces closing in upon him. He can, however, react to his circumstances and, now that he’s initiated the cycle, we are going to see Morpheus be himself—not his function, not his responsibilities, not even his duties will save him, and he knows it. But for a little while, he gets to be himself. For the King of Dreams who tells Shakespeare, “I have no story of my own,” he’ll prove himself wrong.
Brief Lives is also where we seen most fully how much the Dream-King has changed. The process that began in Burgess’ glass globe (or maybe earlier than that, The Sandman Overture suggests) has, despite all Morpheus’ denial of change, come to fruition. In “The Song of Orpheus” we saw the old Morpheus turn his back on his son and refuse him intercession, mercy, or comfort. This is the same Dream who would have left Calliope to rot in Richard Madoc’s attic. But time has changed him, even if he doesn’t recognize the extent to which it has—he not only apologized to Nada and became friends with Hob Gadling, but he has become aware of the dignity and worth of the lives of other people. He grieves the death of Ruby and feels responsible for her, as well as for the others who died in the course of their travels. When he recommits to Delirium’s quest, there’s no more fooling around; their path goes straight to Destiny, and to the oracle they need as guide. Despite that he falls apart at the realization of what this quest will cost him, will require of him, Morpheus keeps his word to Delirium, and the two make their way to Destruction.
You can’t seek Destruction without being changed.
Delirium wants her brother back. Morpheus wants an explanation—why did Destruction abandon his realm? Destruction explains, partly in the flashback to the start of the Age of Reason, that he knows where faith in reason will ultimately end: “Are not light and gross bodies intraconvertible? Alas, they are. And from that follows the flames...the big bang, the loud explosions,” in short, the end of the world. Destruction has spent a lot of time in this world; he’s grown fond of it. As he attempts to explain to Morpheus, that he has abandoned his place doesn’t mean that creation and destruction have ended. No, they still continue—but he is no longer responsible for them. It’s not his fault.
During their dinner, the conversation between Dream and Destruction turns on the paradox of what constitutes consciousness. Morpheus sees himself as unchanging. He thinks he is little more than his function and he defines himself by his responsibilities. Destruction takes a wider and wiser view; both he and Delirium know more about the nature of reality than they can easily articulate. And although Dream doesn’t accept either Destruction’s conclusions or his advice—yet—he has heard the lesson. Destruction has offered Dream possible answers for him to consider.
In the meantime, the price of wisdom (as in, the price of finding Destruction) has yet to be paid, and the cost is everything. Morpheus has to grant his son a boon, and the boon is what Orpheus has wanted, has longed for, for three thousand years: he wants to die. Only his father can give him that death. It’s a mercy killing in every sense of the word. It also violates one of the most ancient of taboos—the killing of kin.
This is what Morpheus knew he would have to do when he fell apart in Destiny’s garden. He knew what Orpheus would ask. It should have happened three thousand years ago, and every day since, although Morpheus has arranged for his son’s care, he has avoided him. Until now. Only now, at the end of life, do father and son reconcile.
Would the old Morpheus have shrugged off his son’s death? There’s no way to know. The new Morpheus, however, is devastated, fully human in his reaction.
The blood that drips from his hands, Orpheus’ blood, falls to the grass and becomes a new type of flower, a flower that now surrounds Morpheus.
Despair takes one of the flowers as a trophy to Desire, but Desire isn’t triumphant now that Dream has spilled family blood with what will be catastrophic consequences; it’s scared. Whatever happens next will be irrevocable.
The volume is bookended in two different ways. The first: Dream’s sorrow, punctuated by the voice of Merv Pumpkinhead. At the opening, Merv complains about Morpheus’ moping over the loss of his girlfriend (which is similar to Orpheus’ overwrought grief over Eurydice and implies that both father and son, more alike than not, were really in love with love). At the end, when Morpheus returns to the castle so changed that his gatekeepers don’t recognize him at first, Merv complains to Lucius of Morpheus, “he’s a good guy, but he, y’know, overreacts. One little thing goes wrong, and he acts like the sky is falling… Real life. That’s what guys like him never have to face up to. Real life.” Unlike in the beginning, when he’s raining all over the Dreaming and threatening to flood the castle, this time Morpheus quietly excuses himself, goes to his private quarters, washes the blood from his hands, and sits.
The other motif that bookends Brief Lives also gives name to the volume, and that is the fact that all life is brief, whether it lasts one hundred fifty centuries or a mere decade. Bernie Capax, remembering the smell of mammoths and crushed by a wall, cries out at the very last, “Not yet.” Destruction asks Dream and Delirium, “Do neither of you ever just sit back and remember? Just think back on times gone? All the living things whose lives you’ve touched? All the planets and spaces and planes you’ve seen? All the forms you’ve taken? Just sit and think?” He looks at the stars and pretends they’re unchanging, but he knows better. Nothing is unchanging, and every beginning has in its dna its own end.
Still, wisdom abides, embodied in Andros, Orpheus’ guardian, who begins and closes the volume with the simple but profound knowledge that today is beautiful. Life is beautiful and precious because it’s finite. It will end, and that alone makes it priceless.
As Destruction takes his leave (again) he offers his two siblings gifts. He entrusts Delirium to his friend Barnabas (and although Barnabas isn’t drawn as a border collie I’m damn sure he is one), and he tells Dream, “Remember that I left. Remember how hard it was for me to leave; and that it was not your fault.”
A suggestion and an absolution. And a turning point.
References
All quotations are taken from Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Brief Lives. NY: Vertigo, 1994, unpaginated edition.
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