After reading the first three stories of The Sandman Dream Country, I questioned if Oneiros from the “Calliope” short story, Lord Shaper from the “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” and the Cat of Dreams from “A Dream of a Thousands Cats” are all the character Dream. While the plots of the stories are very different, there are striking similarities between these three characters, even if one of them is portrayed as a cat. The videos in today’s class helped provide background on the Sandman series as a whole, and explained that the third volume is made up of four short stories. The stories supposedly show Dream at different points in time. Although Dream is called different names in the stories, whether it it Oneiros or Lord Shaper, Gaiman, and the rest of the visual team made artistic choices that link the three personas of Dream together across the stories.
First is the decision to use the same jagged and bolded speech bubbles for all three characters. Dream is the only character to have a personalized speech bubble. Dream’s panels also tend to be darker, with black and blue undertones. Dream’s character’s also have distinctive eyes. They are either black or yellow, very haunting to the reader. However, the eyes also make me question if the Cat of Dreams is a persona of Dream because the Cat of Dreams does not possess the “twinkling” eye that is shown with both Oneiros and Lord Shaper. This story also stands out from the other two because it exists outside of time. The first and third stories are given very exact dates for when the stories take place, whereas the second story is never given a date. The story the Cat of Dreams tells takes a jab at the fragility of history and time, suggesting that it can be changed in an instant. Perhaps the Cat of Dreams exists outside of known time, a predecessor to Dream. The subtle peculiarities of “The Dream of Cats” makes me hesitate to accept that the Cat of Dreams is Dream.
I think that Oneiros and Lord Shaper were both Dream just going by different names. I think in class people who have read the rest of the series were saying that dream has many forms including the cat one, so I think they are all the same character.
While the Dream Cat didn’t have the exact same twinkling eye, he did have eyes that gave off light like stars. And the shape of the light in the left eye on the panel that just has Dream Cat’s eyes does look reminiscent of the twinkle shape.
It is interesting to look at the different visual interpretations of Dream to see what they have in common and in what ways they differ. I think you got the main similarities down with the color scheme and the speech bubbles.
As someone who has read the entire Sandman series, I can confirm that all three representations, Onerous, Lord Shaper, and Dream Cat, are indeed the same entity, Dream. Throughout the books he goes by many names, and in short stories like this, appears in many different forms. These forms are a reflection of who he is interacting with. For instance, in The Dream of a Thousand Cats” he appears as a cat because the person viewing him is a cat, and in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” he appears in a Shakespearean style of clothes, like those around him. Dream, as a personification of dreams, appears different to different people. This connects to our class, since it begs the question of what he actually looks like, if different people see their own, subjective version of dream.