Thank the Sandman For Your Nightmares

As winter approaches and the semester comes to a panicked frenzy, it is not uncommon to have a nightmare or two along the way. These may often consist of but not limited to: getting a C, D, or F on a paper that you don’t even remember writing, getting the wrong exam but then getting a panic attach because maybe it was you that didn’t study properly what was on the exam, walking into an exam and having no idea where the semester went, and (my favorite) walking into a classroom for the first time and realizing it is the last day of school and everyone is turning in beautifully stacked, thirty-page research papers.

While this tends to be a common occurrence among students, especially at the graduate level, if we lived in a time before we analyzed tales told out loud by the campfire, we would probably be familiar with the old folktale Ole Lukøje, or more commonly known as, the Sandman.

From what we now know of this mythical creature, from a wide variety of originating telling’s, it is the story of the master of dreams and nightmares—a Santa Claus of sorts. The tale usually involves Ole Lukøje coming to sleeping souls and standing over them, bestowing lovely dreams to those who are deemed worthy and nightmares for those who have behaved poorly.

As many folktales became methods of interpellation for children, this specific tale took a variety of forms and still can be seen as a way of scaring children into going to bed when told. Before Hans Christian Andersen published his children’s tale version, E. T. A. Hoffman published his own version in 1816. The difference between the two is drastic: with Hoffman including a Sandman who comes for naughty children and gouges a child’s eyeballs out if they are opened when they are supposed to be sleeping and the Andersen version includes a sweeter but still creepy Sandman who tells stories to a boy over the course of a week. In Andersen’s version, the Sandman tells the boy on the last day that his brother, Death, will be visiting him the next day. Ideas of death were common in early publications of children’s fairytales, which became a way of teaching children that if death finds them, it is merely a way that they will be able to see God sooner. Though Andersen’s version of this tale only implies death, it still holds a few sadistic qualities that are most often glanced over.

If we looked at Andersen’s version, even though he includes “But Ole-Luk-Oie does not wish to hurt them, for he is very fond of children, and only wants them to be quiet that he may relate to them pretty stories, and they never are quiet until they are in bed and asleep,” he also is telling the story of a male mythical creature that comes and stands over sleeping children, forcing them into a dream world. And while this suggests a sort of power dynamic, one that comes from a dominating male creature, the story presents children with a terrifying idea that they give up all control of their own minds while they sleep. The use of terror in this tale therefore produces good behavior—a seduction of sorts into this reward worthy behavior through a use of terror within the child’s imagination. 

So as the dreams start clouding your mind, as deadlines creep upon us, we must wonder what naughty behaviors have given passage for the Sandman to grant us the nightmares that just won't go away.

The Prolonged Youth of "Once Upon A Time"

The theme of PAMLA this year was “Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture," which, as you can imagine, brought out a wealth of discussion on the many variations, formations, and instances of children, childhood and youth in literature as a whole (children's or otherwise). One of the ideas that I saw emerge throughout the conference is the idea of rebirth -- a rediscovery of childhood, of innocence, of youth. Admittedly this popped up in my own paper, but the notion that childness manifests itself in a myriad of ways that can be seen across all stages of life bubbled forth from numerous panels. And directly from that idea came the image of the prolonged or eternal youth.

I caught myself thinking about this in particular when I listened to a panelist discuss the nature of kids stepping out of their structured lives into an adventure. This specific topic discussed the hobo culture for children, and brought up an interesting commentary from the 1930's that concluded that children -- boys and girls alike -- ought to go out for an adventure, to escape and live "like hobos" but only for a few months (six at most) otherwise they will become "spoiled." The child may go "rotten" by experiencing too much of the so-called real world. He or she needs to retain some amount of innocence and unworldliness it seems.

How about flipping that idea, inverting it to think about a person who remains in youth, who tries to prolong his childishness, youth or appearance of youth. Elements of cultures are built around this concept (the image of eternal youth that defines Hollywood, for example), and it plays at the forefront of many YA novels now. The idea of the immortalized teenager, whether by vampire's bite or dystopian technology, suddenly presents these issues in a new light. Prolonged youth eventually leads to a rotten soul, perhaps?

Or if we allow ourselves to go further -- does it turn them downright evil?

Is that the belief spurring what's been done to Peter Pan, particularly in the reenvisioning on the current television series "Once Upon a Time"? The show represents the movement to reclaim fairy tales for adults, evidently by pitting the heroic adults against someone more devious, dangerous, and cunning than the dark Rumpelstiltskin, that someone being the eternal child Peter Pan. Depicting him as a threat to adults and children alike also troubles the usual adult/child binary that his story usually enlists. But in its place, do we now have the opportunity to critique Pan through the deleterious effects of eternal youth? Just something to think about.