The Graveyard Book

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2-Interlude

Chapters 6-8

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Family, the Ones Who Love You

The Graveyard Book poses an unusual question, whether a boy can grow up successfully if he’s raised by ghosts. The book also asks, more deeply, whether any group of kindly oddballs can raise a child, and it answers decisively that what matters aren’t blood connections, but the ties of love and caring.

Through an almost magical combination of luck and destiny, the Dorian toddler escapes the massacre of his family and finds sanctuary at the graveyard at the top of the hill. Mrs. Owens and other ghosts there show compassion for the little boy and bring him into their community, where they protect and nurture him. Guided by guardian Silas—who learns that Bod is the prophesied destroyer of the Jacks of All Trades—the graveyard raises the boy for nearly 15 years.

The group not only manages to hide him in plain sight, but they also show their competence as caretakers and teachers uniquely positioned to protect the boy in ways that an ordinary, human adoptive family might easily fail to do. Bod’s situation is extremely unusual: Were he not under the ghosts’ protection, he might have been found and killed quickly, and the chance to vanquish the evil Jacks would be lost along with the tragic death of a wonderful person.

Being different doesn’t mean being incapable. The ghosts’ wispy appearance and the fact that they’re already dead don’t matter. What’s important is their abiding love for Bod and their willingness to reach out to him, teach him what they know, and do everything in their power to protect him. Even Silas, a vampire, stretches his considerable powers to benefit the boy, who grows up learning that odd characters or strangely different beings are just as worthy, caring, intelligent, and responsible as the people normally considered qualified to raise a child.

Bod sees worth in both people and ghosts, and he would love it if they could transcend the barriers between them and become friends. On one special night, when the Macabray dance occurs, a great magic overcomes those barriers, and for a few hours Bod’s wish comes true, and the living dance with the dead: “Everyone, thought Bod, everyone is dancing!” (160).

Some people grow up feeling that they’re in the wrong family, and many later discover people who offer the respect and love they missed in their biological families. Even those who love and cherish their birth families sometimes discover, later in life, people who welcome them into their own communities provide a kind of second family made up of those who appreciate them in special ways. Bod’s adoptive graveyard community provides this experience from the outset, and he grows up knowing that, wherever he may travel, he’ll be able to find people he can connect with.

The Loneliness of Unusual People

Many children, as they grow up, feel misunderstood or rejected for being different, and they conclude that the things that make them special and gifted often are the things that separate them from others. His unusual training under the watchful eyes of graveyard ghosts helps Bod to become especially smart and skilled, and he learns much about how people think and behave from watching his ghostly community. Down in the city, though, he feels out of place. He must come to terms with his unusual qualities and learn the hard way how to express them without driving others away.

As a very young boy, Bod’s friendship with Scarlett is made simpler because she believes he’s a figment of her imagination. This gives him the freedom to be himself, and he enjoys these early experiences in companionship. What he doesn’t yet know is that other people won’t be so welcoming.

His first major encounter with strangers happens during his visit to Mr. Bolger’s antique shop, where Bolger and his partner Hustings try to exploit him. Bod must rely on help from Liza the ghost witch, another individual considered unusual, to escape the men’s scheming. Two years pass before he ventures out again, this time to the Macabray dance, where he’s protected by the magic of the occasion and enjoys human company without risk.

Shortly thereafter, he tries being a school student, but his innocent efforts to use his ghostly skills while he helps unfortunate school kids resist two bullies, gets him into trouble. Once again, his strange gifts both help and hurt him, and he must return alone to the graveyard. Bod’s is an experience shared, each in their own way, by children the world over who are smart and talented but unable to express themselves fully without feeling like outsiders.

By the time he meets the Jacks of All Trades and defends his life against them, Bod is, if not cynical, at least wary, of outsiders. Just when his success in defeating the assassins gives him a sense of his own unique power and his newfound ability to take care of himself, he loses his best friend, Scarlett, who rejects him angrily: “You aren’t a person. People don’t behave like you. […] You’re a monster” (286).

For Bod, the rejection is harshly painful, and hard for him to understand. “I’m not a bad person. And I’m just like her. I’m alive too” (289). The toughest, most lonely lesson he learns is that others aren’t always fair-minded; their biases, whatever form they may take, can push away the very people who love them simply because those people have strange attributes.

In the end, Bod is big enough to see past his confusion and resentment and understands the deep truth about rejection: It’s other people’s fears that make them turn away, and that the rejected person isn’t at fault. With this understanding, Bod can roam the world knowing that, whatever others may think of him, he knows that he’s a good and worthwhile human being.

Life Is for Living

Nobody “Bod” Owens grows up learning to enjoy the comfort and safety of his adopted ghost family. His greatest challenges, though, confront him when he realizes that he must reach out to the world of the living if he is to realize fully his potential. Bod faces progressively more difficult tests in the city, each of which move him a step closer to his true destiny.

Bod shows remarkable initiative at age eight, when he meets the ghost witch Liza Hempstock in Potter’s Field and decides to obtain a grave marker for her. He braves the Indigo Man crypt, steals its ruby brooch, walks into town, and offers it for sale to Mr. Bolger. His efforts are childishly inept but sincere and daring, and though his immediate plan fails, he parlays his unfortunate experience as Bolger’s captive by stealing a bottle of paint and a glass paperweight and converting them into the thing he wanted all along, an ersatz headstone for Liza.

Bod’s guardian, Silas, knows that Bod must eventually face the world outside the graveyard. Early on, he says to the boy, “You need to be among your own kind” (209). When Bod is 10, the Macabray dance unfolds in the town square, and the boy joins ghosts and living residents as they dance together while Silas stands guard in the shadows. This strange, rare event helps Bod understand that he can have happy, worthwhile experiences among a city full of people as well as in a graveyard of ghosts.

Bod again takes the initiative when he insists to Silas that he should attend a local school. Silas relents, and Bod at first does well, using his ghost-granted ability to Fade and become anonymous while he soaks up knowledge, especially from the school’s books. His heart gets ahead of his mind, though, when he witnesses the bullies Nick and Mo treating their fellow students cruelly, and he tries to help the victims. He wins a few battles but loses the war when Mo has him arrested, and he realizes that he still has a lot to learn about how to navigate the world of humans.

Bod learns a much more advanced and dangerous version of this lesson when, at age 14, he reunites with Scarlett, who accidentally introduces him to the man who’s been trying to find and kill him for years, Jack Frost. Bod protects Scarlett and fulfills his prophesied destiny by vanquishing all the remaining Jacks of All Trades, but, in the process, he loses Scarlett’s friendship when she can’t absorb the enormity of Bod’s secret life and abilities.

Each of these experiences cause Bod grief but also strengthen him, so that he finally becomes a man who can take care of himself. It’s then, when he loses the ability to communicate with his ghostly community, that he knows his true destiny lies out there, beyond the gates, in the wide realm of people. The ghosts, and Silas, have understood this all along, but it’s a sad parting nonetheless. Ahead of Bod lies a world of discovery and adventure where he can test himself against new challenges, meet new friends, and learn as much as he can about the wondrous world outside the graveyard.