Sunday, April 6, 2014

Mythic Fiction

Neil Gaiman has always been one of my favorite authors...I have most of his books, my favorite being Neverwhere!  A lot of his books have some symbol of innocence in it, and an event that causes its corruption.  All of us had some of our innocence corrupted one way or another while we were growing up.  I know I lost some of mine when the Twin Towers were brought down.  I saw people jumping from the building, choosing that death over burning inside the towers.  I knew that I knew some of those people; they were neighbors, parents of my classmates, family friends...it was horrifying.  I was only in 3rd grade, but I knew what was going on.

The main narrator loses his innocence starting with the death of his cat, and then when he sees the corpse of the man in his dad's car.

The ending gave me a huge shock- he realized he had done this many times before, and had in fact, "died" of sorts before.  It's almost like he is in this constantly repeating world loop. The Higurashi no Naku koro Ni series has a similar theme; the characters all die, and then in the next episode they are alive again.  You soon learn that this has been happening for years and years, and the only way to escape this loop is by remembering that these events have happened before, realizing you are stuck in a loop, and avoiding death...it was a really gory, scary anime. 


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