The Graveyard Book subverts common notions of good and evil. While werewolves, vampires, and ghosts feature as villains in many classic novels and stories, in The Graveyard Book, it’s the vampire Silas, the werewolf Miss Lupescu, and the ghosts of the graveyard who are the inarguable “good guys.” And instead of positioning living humans as forces for good in a fight against nefarious supernatural beings, The Graveyard Book features human villains almost exclusively. By subverting these expectations about who or what is good and evil, Gaiman implies it’s impossible to tell whether a person (or being) is good or evil just by looking at them and making assumptions. Rather, one should judge a person’s goodness based on their actions and how they treat others.
The novel suggests that judging someone as good or evil based solely on appearances is a learned behavior. When baby Bod toddles into the graveyard, he has no idea that the human (but magical) Jack behind him is bad or that the ghosts in front of him are good. Instead, when the ghost Mrs. Owens envelops the baby in mist, protecting him from Jack, Bod simply responds to her interest and her kindness. And going forward, he accepts her wholeheartedly as his adoptive mother because she cares for him and supports him as he grows. As a baby, Bod hasn’t yet internalized cultural narratives that dictate that ghosts are dangerous (or that they don’t exist at all). He’s therefore able to embrace Mrs. Owens and Mr. Owens as his adoptive parents without any hesitation. And later, when Bod briefly attends school in the village and encounters bullies, he uses the knowledge that the bullies have learned to fear or not believe in ghosts to his advantage. Bod wouldn’t have been able to scare the bullies into leaving younger kids alone had the bullies not grown up hearing that anything supernatural must be evil and frightening.
In addition, The Graveyard Book also suggests that it’s unhelpful and even harmful to judge whether a person is good or evil just by looking at them—from the outside, it’s often impossible to tell. This is reflected in the way that the ghosts talk about the individuals buried in the Potter’s Fields, a piece of unconsecrated (unblessed) ground and where the villagers buried “suicides, criminals, and witches.” The ghosts give Bod the impression that the people buried there are evil, simply because they engaged in criminal acts or because they didn’t die in an appropriate manner. But Silas encourages Bod to remember that, “in days gone by you could be hanged for stealing a shilling. And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence” (that is, commit suicide). In other words, seeing the residents of the Potter’s Fields as wholly bad means ignoring that justice systems aren’t always just. And for Bod, it would mean that his ghostly friend Liza, who was buried in the Potter’s Fields because villagers believed she was a witch, isn’t worth associating with. But Liza proves to be far from evil and indeed, becomes one of Bod’s most loyal friends in the graveyard.
Ultimately, the novel proposes that whether a person is good or evil comes down to one’s individual choices—and it makes it clear that having made bad choices in the past doesn’t mark someone as evil for life. Silas encapsulates this idea when he bids 15-year-old Bod farewell. As they discuss Silas’s involvement with the Honour Guard—a mysterious organization that protects the mortal world and saves Bod from Jack—Bod insists that Silas did the right thing killing Jack and his cronies, since they’re all “monsters.” But Silas shares that in his lifetime, he has also done monstrous things. However, he says simply, “people can change.” With this, Silas insists that good and evil aren’t as clear cut as young Bod might think they are. Rather, a person can contain both good and bad qualities and have dong good or bad things in their lifetime. What matters most, he suggests, is that a person continues to strive to do the right thing, no matter who they are or what they’ve done in their past.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Good, Evil, and Assumptions ThemeTracker
Good, Evil, and Assumptions Quotes in The Graveyard Book
“Let’s see, it’s been a while since I’ve been down that way. But I don’t remember anyone particularly evil. Remember, in days gone by you could be hanged for stealing a shilling. And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.”
“They say there’s a witch in uncons—unconsecrated ground,” he said.
“Yes, dear. But you don’t want to go over there.”
“Why not?”
Miss Borrows smiled the guileless smile of the dead. “They aren’t our sort of people,” she said.
“But it is the graveyard, isn’t it? I mean, I’m allowed to go there if I want to?”
“That,” said Miss Borrows, “would not be advisable.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Got no headstone,” she said, turning down the corners of her mouth. “Might be anybody. Mightn’t I?”
“But you must have a name?”
“Liza Hempstock, if you please,” she said tartly. Then she said, “It’s not that much to ask, is it? Something to mark my grave. I’m just down there, see? With nothing but nettles to show where I rest.” And she looked so sad, just for a moment, that Bod wanted to hug her.
“And the teachers here have taught me lots of things, but I need more. If I’m going to survive out there, one day.”
Silas seemed unimpressed. “Out of the question. Here we can keep you safe. How could we keep you safe, out there? Outside, anything could happen.”
“Yes,” agreed Bod. “That’s the potential thing you were talking about.”
“He’s out here, somewhere, and he wants you dead,” she said. “Him as killed your family. Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us. Come home, Bod.”
“I think...I said things to Silas. He’ll be angry.”
“If he didn’t care about you, you couldn’t upset him,” was all she said.
In the graveyard, no one ever changed. The little children Bod had played with when he was small were still little children; Fortinbras Bartleby, who had once been his best friend, was now four or five years younger than Bod was, and they had less to talk about each time they saw each other; Thackeray Porringer was Bod’s height and age, and seemed to be in much better temper with him; [...]
“Look, it’s okay. I dealt with them.”
Scarlett took a step away from him. She said, “You aren’t a person. People don’t behave like you. You’re as bad as he was. You’re a monster.”
Bod said, “She was scared of me.”
“Yes.”
“But why? I saved her life. I’m not a bad person. And I’m just like her. I’m alive too.”
“But you did the right thing. I mean, stopping the Jacks. They were terrible. They were monsters.”
[...]
“I have not always done the right thing. When I was younger...I did worse things than Jack. Worse than any of them. I was the monster, then, Bod, and worse than any monster.”
[...]
“But you aren’t that any longer, are you?”
Silas said, “People can change,” and then fell silent.
