Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Graveyard Book, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Community, Identity, and Coming of Age
Parents and Guardians
Life and Death
Good, Evil, and Assumptions
Summary
Analysis
A man named Jack holds his knife in front of him. The knife is sharp and wet with blood. Jack has already killed a man, a woman and a child, but he has one more victim to attend to: a small toddler. He climbs the stairs to the bedroom at the top of the house, vowing not to smile until he’s done. When Jack reaches the bedroom, the moonlight is just bright enough to illuminate the crib. But when Jack raises the knife to stab the figure in the crib, he stops—it’s just a teddy bear. The baby is gone. Jack sniffs and memorizes the baby’s milky smell. He follows the scent through the house and out the front door. On the porch, Jack grunts in frustration. It’s a foggy night. He marches up the hill.
Starting the novel in the immediate aftermath of three murders begins the story on an ominous note and suggests that death is going to figure prominently in the novel. This passage also sets Jack up as the novel’s clear antagonist—and a particularly cruel one at that, given that he’s willing to murder babies in cold blood. But with its family murdered, the baby is now entirely on its own.
Themes
The baby has been a terror ever since he learned to walk. He loves climbing and wandering. Earlier, a crash woke him up. Since he was bored, he scaled his crib and fell onto a pile of soft toys. Taking care to not cry—crying attracts attention—the baby left his room and slid down the stairs on his bottom, pacifier in hand. At the bottom of the stairs, the wet diaper fell off. The baby toddled out of the house and up the hill.
The fog is thinner at the top of the hill. The narrator asks the reader to notice the abandoned funeral chapel, stone tombs and headstones, and various animals. But the narrator says readers wouldn’t be able to see a “pale, plump woman” who’s just misty shadow. The woman approaches the graveyard’s locked gates and calls for Mr. Owens, her husband. Mr. Owens stares at the baby at Mrs. Owens’s feet, who reaches out to grab Mrs. Owens’s finger. Mrs. Owens asks what to do with the baby, but her husband points out it’s not their concern—the baby is alive. Mr. Owens notes that a man—presumably the baby’s parent—is coming into the graveyard. But Mrs. Owens insists the man doesn’t look like family.
Describing Mrs. Owens as “misty shadow”—coupled with the graveyard setting—suggests that Mr. and Mrs. Owens are ghosts, not living people. Thus, it makes sense that they want nothing to do with a live baby—it doesn’t seem as though the baby can actually touch them, after all. Interestingly, the baby can see the ghosts and isn’t scared of them—the novel’s first indication that fear of supernatural things is learned rather than intrinsic. It seems that, to the baby, Mrs. Owens is just a person who’s interested in him and therefore appears trustworthy.
Themes
Even though he’s a ghost himself and has been dead for several hundred years, Mr. Owens’s mouth drops open when he sees a ghost appear. This ghost isn’t a normal one: it’s gray like static and barely in focus. In a panicky voice, the ghost screams that the man that’s approaching (Jack) is trying to hurt her baby. Mrs. Owens realizes this ghost is the baby’s mother; she just died. The ghost’s panic wakes other ghosts in the graveyard. As ghosts gather, Mrs. Owens puts an arm around the new ghost and speaks quietly to her. The ghost begins to fade, but Mrs. Owens promises to “try” and asks her husband if he’ll be the baby’s father—the ghost is asking them to protect her son. The man scales the fence and catches sight of the infant as Mr. Owens agrees. The staticky ghost disappears.
That the ghost of the baby’s mother looks so drastically different from the other graveyard ghosts suggests that it takes time to transition from life to death. When the Owenses agree to be the baby’s adoptive parents, it suggests that ghosts may actually be able to interact with the living but usually choose not to.
Themes
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Mrs. Owens puts her arms out and beckons the baby. Jack watches as the baby disappears in a swirl of mist. Jack calls to the baby several times, and a strange man appears before him. Though Jack’s clothes are dark, this stranger’s clothes are darker—and he somehow manages to look even more terrifying than Jack himself. Jack explains that he’s looking for a lost baby. The stranger pulls out keys and leads Jack to the gate. Jack pulls out his knife, knowing he could murder this man, but then the stranger says that Jack probably saw a fox, not a baby. The stranger opens the gate as Jack mulls this over.
The baby presumably disappears as Mr. and Mrs. Owens agree to take him in as their own. This not only blurs the lines between the living and the dead—there’s no indication the baby died when he was adopted moments ago—it also suggests that anyone, even a ghost, can be a parent. And being a parent, this suggests, gives a person the unique ability to protect a child from harm.
Themes
The stranger locks the gate behind Jack and says that Jack doesn’t need to remember this conversation. Jack agrees and realizes he only saw a fox. After watching Jack walk back down the hill, the stranger then heads to the middle of the graveyard, where the landscape forms a natural amphitheater. Josiah Worthington bought the graveyard 300 years ago and ensured it would remain a graveyard. He reserved the best spot at the top of the hill for himself. Though the graveyard houses about 10,000 souls, fewer than 300 gather in the amphitheater to discuss the matter of the baby.
In this passage, Jack undergoes a sudden shift from being determined to kill the baby and certain that he sees it to agreeing that he only saw a fox. This dramatic shift, coupled with the stranger’s suggestion that Jack need not remember this conversation, suggests that the stranger somehow erased or reworked Jack’s memory of seeing the baby in the graveyard. Meanwhile, that only 300 out of 10,000 ghosts emerge to discuss the baby suggests that within the larger ghostly community exists a smaller, more engaged one.
Themes
Josiah Worthington insists this is ridiculous. Mr. Owens—who, in life, made furniture for Josiah Worthington and still admires the man—haltingly says that his wife sees it as her duty to keep the baby. At this, Josiah points out that the “creature” must return to its “natural home.” Mrs. Owens cuts Josiah off and insists that this is silly—she should be worrying about getting the baby food, not arguing with “fiddle-pated old dunderheads.” She also reminds everyone that the baby’s mother made her promise to care for the baby Caius Pompeius, the old Roman, asks what Mrs. Owens plans to feed the baby. Mother Slaughter, meanwhile, asks where the baby will live. She looks shocked when Mrs. Owens suggests they give the baby the Freedom of the Graveyard.
This argument highlights that there are different perspectives among ghosts regarding how, when, and even if they should interact with the living. The language that Josiah Worthington uses to describe the baby is dehumanizing—which is ironic, given that the baby is human while Josiah is an ancient ghost. Referring to the infant as a “creature” shows that he sees the baby as fundamentally different from himself and the other ghosts. While this may be true, Josiah seems to believe that this means the ghosts have no responsibility to care for the baby. But Mrs. Owens insists that they’re not done interacting with the world just because they’re ghosts.
Themes
Caius Pompeius concedes that they’ve given the Freedom of the Graveyard to someone before, but that someone isn’t a living human. Reluctantly, the stranger—Silas—approaches the ghosts and says he supports Mrs. Owens. It will “take a graveyard” to raise this baby. Since he can leave the graveyard, Silas offers to fetch food for the baby. When Mother Slaughter points out that Silas could easily have to abandon his duties, Silas offers a suggestion: the Owenses will be the baby’s parents, while Silas will be a formal guardian. He promises to find another caregiver if he ever has to leave.
Caius Pompeius implies that Silas is the one who isn’t alive, forcing readers to question what Silas is, since he’s neither ghost nor human. Regardless, Silas agrees with Mrs. Owens that the graveyard has a responsibility to care for the baby. Setting up a formal guardianship shows Silas’s understanding that children need more than two people to raise them—indeed, it takes a village, or in this case a graveyard, to raise a child.
Themes
Silas asks Mrs. Owens if the baby has a name. She wasn’t able to learn anything from the ghost of the baby’s mother, but Silas says a new name will protect the baby. Several ghosts note that the baby looks like people they knew in life, but Mrs. Owens spits that the baby looks like “nobody but himself.” Silas declares that they’ll call the baby Nobody Owens. Nobody, who’s been sleeping, wakes up, stares at Silas, and then wails. Caius Pompeius sends Mrs. Owens away so the other ghosts can discuss the matter without her.
Giving Nobody a name is one of the first acts of love and protection that Silas and Mrs. Owens perform for Nobody. It protects Nobody from Jack, as a new name will make it far harder to for him to track down the toddler. This also gives Nobody the beginnings of his own identity.
Themes
Mrs. Owens waits with Nobody outside the funeral chapel, which was declared a building of historical interest 40 years before. It’s been empty and dilapidated for decades. Mrs. Owens sings a lullaby she remembers from her childhood, but she forgets the final line. She sings until Silas joins her. He leads her into the building and puts down a cardboard box full of food. Then, he pulls out a banana, a fruit Mrs. Owens has never seen and Silas has never eaten. Baby Nobody eats it happily as Silas suggests they house the boy here. Flustered, Mrs. Owens insists she doesn’t want to bother Silas. As Mrs. Owens cleans Nobody’s face, Silas says he can leave the graveyard. When Mrs. Owens says she can’t, Silas says it must be good to belong.
The way that the narrator describes the funeral chapel gives the impression that the graveyard as a whole is frozen in time and set apart from the outside world. Silas’s willingness to house Nobody in the chapel and fetch food shows that, like Mrs. Owens, he’s fully committed to raising Nobody. The novel begins dropping hints that Silas is a vampire: he can pass for human (which is why he can get food), he doesn’t eat real food like bananas (which would make sense if he only drinks blood), and he is neither alive nor a ghost. His comment about it being good to belong suggests that because he exists in this in-between state, he has no real home.
Themes
The ghosts discuss into early morning. But the arrival of a beautiful woman on horseback—the Lady on the Grey—stops them short. She’s the one who takes each person to their death. She announces that “the dead should have charity.” After this, the ghosts decide to give Nobody the Freedom of the Graveyard. Within the hour, Nobody is fast asleep in the Owenses’ tomb. Just before sunrise, Silas goes to the house of Nobody’s birth parents and inspects the bodies. Meanwhile, Jack grows increasingly angry. He can’t figure out where he went wrong in his attempt to murder the toddler. Jack plots his next move and decides he doesn’t need to tell the Convocation that he failed.
Giving Nobody the Freedom of the Graveyard turns Nobody into a real member of the graveyard community. It seems to allow Nobody access to the Owens’s tomb—which, presumably, is locked or otherwise inaccessible to the living—and formalizes his adoption by Mr. and Mrs. Owens. It also clearly protects Nobody from Jack, since Jack can’t find the toddler. But because Jack is still looking for Nobody, it suggests that Bod will have to hide from this particular villain for a while.
Themes
