If a fairy tale is defined as a story featuring folkloric characters and fantasy, then Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano’s The Sandman: The Dream Hunters fits the bill perfectly. English author Neil Gaiman writes while Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano draws.
More than a beautifully illustrated storybook, the end result of their collaboration is a fascinating fusion of talents. Each page of text is accompanied by a corresponding image. Gaiman’s stylish prose and Amano’s opulent artwork stand side-by-side, creating a totally unique reading experience.
The story begins with a wager between a fox and a badger. The two agree that whoever succeeds in driving out a lone monk from his temple will get to use the place as a den. The fox and the badger take turns playing various tricks on the monk, but the monk sees through their wiles and rebuffs them. The badger ends up running away, while the fox (who is female) takes the form of a woman and apologizes to the monk. She had fallen madly in love with him. The monk forgives her, and they exist peacefully within each other’s reach for a time. But as I’ve said, the tale has just begun.
The fox devotes herself to the monk completely, vowing to protect and take care of him for the rest of her life. Her love is soon put to the test when she uncovers a plot against the monk. A sorcerer who lives in constant fear and paranoia is advised by fortunetellers to slay the monk in order to gain his peace of mind. There is a condition, however: the monk must be put to death without violence and pain, or else the ritual will fail. Thus the sorcerer casts a spell on the monk’s dreams, setting it up in such a way that the monk would be trapped in his own dream until his life fades away. The fox cannot bear this. She goes off to seek the elusive Baku or Dream Eaters, hoping that they’ll take the evil dream away.
Gaiman’s narrative and Amano’s pictures shine in their simplicity and eloquence, expressing a multitude of thoughts in what seems to be a minimal number of words and brush strokes. Each one’s style complements the other’s naturally, much in the same way as fluffy white clouds and a bright blue sky go together.
The Sandman: The Dream Hunters possesses a universal charm and accessibility that transcends the usual stereotypes of the kind of readers a fairy tale would appeal to. It’s a definite page-turner whether you are young, old, male, or female. Taken at face value it is an intriguing story, an archetypal struggle between good and evil peppered with excitement, magic, mythical creatures, and romance no different from well-loved classics such as Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. On a deeper level, the characters and situations can be considered literary representations of abstract concepts like faith, hope, and love.
I was totally engulfed by the world that Gaiman and Amano portrayed – an ancient Japan where anything you could dream of was possible. Everything was so vivid that it felt as if I was actually there with the characters as the story unfolded. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting the book down without knowing what was going to happen to the fox and the monk. Ultimately, the fox decides to sacrifice herself and take the monk’s place in his deadly dream. The monk awakens to find the fox lying beside him, barely alive. This time, it is the monk who goes against all odds to save her at all costs. Supernatural forces guide him to the King of Dreams, who is supposedly the only one who can help the fox. The monk finds out that the fox is dying because of the cursed dream that was meant for him. He asks the King of Dreams to give him back the dream, since it is his by right and not the fox’s. The King of Dreams agrees, amused at the lengths the lovers would go through to save each other. In the end the monk dies and the fox lives, exacting revenge on the sorcerer for killing the man she loves.
The conclusion is not exactly the ideal happy ending we’ve come to expect from a fairy tale. It may seem futile that the fox and the monk don’t end up together after everything they go through, but there is something that is said that makes it all worthwhile: "Nothing is done entirely for nothing," said the fox of dreams." It is actually the King of Dreams addressing the fox as a fox himself. "Nothing is wasted. You are older, you have made decisions, and you are not the fox that you were yesterday. Take what you have learned and move on."
That statement in itself is a valuable lesson that each of us would be wise to take to heart. It does not require any complex philosophizing or meditation, all the King of Dreams does is utter the pure and simple truth. For as long as we are in this world, we live and we learn. The fox and the monk both found the significance of their lives in each other. They are two halves of a whole, and all that they experienced made each a complete person. Nothing can take that away from them, not even death. They are actually the more fortunate ones since people can spend their whole lives searching for meaning and still fail to find it. Looking at it that way, you could say that it’s a happy ending after all.