Death Shall Have No Dominion: Representations of Grandfathers’ Death in Contemporary Picturebooks*

doi:10.4236/als.2013.14009

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Advances in Literary Study

2013. Vol.1, No.4, 34-38

Published Online October 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/als) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/als.2013.14009

Death Shall Have No Dominion: Representations of Grandfathers’

Death in Contemporary Picturebooks*

Konstantinos D. Malafantis

Faculty of Primary Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,

Athens, Greece

Email: [email protected]

Received July 17th, 2013; revised August 11th, 2013; accepted October 8th, 2013

Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

provided the origina l w o rk is properly cited.

The topic of death usually advocates the resistance of language, therefore creators search for linguistic or

visual codes suitable for expressing the unutterable loss of beloved people in contemporary picture or il-

lustrated books for children. For that reason, the meaning of death is portrayed in picturebooks with an

immediate and symbolic way in both text and picture. Adopting a visual and textual approach, we exam-

ine the ways in which authors and illustrators portray the relationship between grandparent and grand-

children in picturebooks. Many stories in children’s literature deal with the archetypal pattern of death

and present it in a way which enables young readers to come to terms with it. In such stories, young pro-

tagonists, and thus young readers, are introduced into questions of ageing and decay, and inevitably of

death, through an imaginative “travel” in time and space which is engendered by the grandparent’s en-

chanting storytelling. Death comes to be viewed as simply a stage toward reunion with eternal nature in

the hereafter. The grandparent’s death is pictured as a “justifiable” event, integrated in the life cycle. Be-

reavement and grief seem to rely on the principal motifs of nature-as-space and nature-as-knowledge,

which eventually manage to negate the dominion of death upon life.

Keywords: Grandfathers’ Death; Picturebooks; Children’s Literature

Introduction

Death, just like birth, is an essential part of human experi-

ence and an archetypal theme in literature. According to Phil-

ippe Ariès (1977/1991), in his landmark study of the subject,

death is a socially constructed phenomenon in Western culture

and one can recognize several changing social attitudes to it

through the centuries. Death is mysterious and overwhelming; a

meaningless monster, according to the eminent historian, that

lurks at the edge of our consciousness, ready to destroy us and

demolish whatever meaning we attribute to our lives. In today’s

world we encounter an “invisibility of death”, a somewhat pa-

radoxical situation, in that we deny the existence of death so

effectively that we no longer develop personal and communal

resources to give it meaning. Death’s invisibility corroborates

its terror; our culture’s loss of spirituality reinforces the mean-

inglessness of death. Contemporary children’s books deal with

the subject through unraveling the mystery and the invisibility

in it. People should not fear death; writers should not hesitate to

represent it as far as death is not considered any more as a dark

or unspeakable taboo.

Death in Picturebooks

As an inescapable condition, rather than just the end of exis-

tence, death has to be approached by both adults and children

with as much sensitivity and understanding as birth. Death

normally evokes grief, mourning and bereavement but, apart

from this intolerable pain, it should be in most cases compre-

hensible, even by young children. Many stories in children’s

literature deal with death and present it in a way which enables

young readers to come to terms with it. Actually, several

death-related books for children emphasize in hilarious ways

the importance of coping with death and loss. One such book is

Babette Cole’s Drop Dead (1997), in which death is described

with great humor and funny illustrations as an integral part of

the essential circle of human life. There are also more sophisti-

cated stories for young audiences such as the controversial yet

beloved novel by Katherine Paterson Bridge to Terabithia

(1977), which challenge the conventional boundaries of ac-

ceptable themes for children’s literature, by taking the topics of

death and loss in an uncompromising way.

Picturebooks on grief, bereavement, and mourning have so

much to offer to children (Dennis, 2012; Corr, 2003-2004; Mc-

George, 1998). Doubtless, death as a topic usually advocates

the resistance of language used to describe it. The creators of

modern picturebooks search for linguistic codes suitable for

expressing the unutterable loss of beloved people. Picturebooks

can vividly represent incidents from everyday life, the character

*According to Judeo-Christian narrative “death shall have no dominion”,as

religion gives the promise of eternal life. In the same way, Dylan Thomas’s

oem “And death shall have no dominion”, celebrates the undying and

eternal s trength of the human spirit. It is because of this strengt h that death

does not claim ultimate victory over humanity. We never truly lose our

beloved persons, as the y live on in our memory and spirit.

K. D. MA LAFANTIS

of a person, the physical environment and also the setting in a

remote time. Text and pictures work together not only to con-

vey the story, but also to illustrate the meaning of death both in

a mimetic and direct way and also in an allegorical and sym-

bolic style (Mitchell, 1995). Additionally, through their illus-

trated format, picturebooks fully develop their characters and

settings, without compressing the loss conditions. Moreover,

visual symbolic language has a pervasive influence on children,

in the sense that it enables them to encounter the feeling of loss,

mainly of grandparents.

Ellen Handler Spitz, in her book Inside Picture Books (1999),

in which she studies picturebooks from the viewpoint of de-

velopmental psychology, stresses the therapeutic effect of these

books on young readers. The meaning of death is portrayed in

picturebooks with an immediate and symbolic way both in text

and in picture. Death primarily concerns grandparents or elder

people who play a secondary role in children’s life. Besides,

death of elderly emerges as the physical ending of an acclaimed

life course. More specifically, the elderly are usually depicted

sleeping in bed—weak from the lassitude of aging and the sick-

ness—or telling fairytales and other stories to their grandchild-

dren. In both cases, text and picture complement each other;

when the absolute and final nature of death cannot be defined

with words, it is with shapes and colors that bereavement is

depicted; and the joyful shapes of illustration transform mourn-

ing into a less painful condition.

Through picturebooks, which are often read repeatedly to

young children, the former learn about the world existing out-

side their immediate surroundings (Weitzman, Eifler, Hokada,

& Ross, 1972). Consequently, storybooks constitute one route

through which children can develop attitudes toward grandpar-

ents and older adults in general (Sciplino, Smith, Hurme, Rusek,

& Bäckvik, 2010). In addition, together with television and the

internet, literature is a primary resource which provides chil-

dren with information and ideas about aging and older adults

(Ansello, 1977; Gilbert & Ricketts, 2008). Through cultural and

social experiences, children come to understand specific roles

played by adults and develop behavioral expectations about

them. Therefore, children become familiar with grandparent

roles and grandparent loss not only through direct association,

but also through media such as children’s books (Dellmann-

Jenkins & Yang, 1997; Janelli, 1988).

In this paper, we examine two well known and awarded

contemporary picture or illustrated books that deal with the

topic of grandfather’s death, the following: Austrian writer

Sigrid Laube’s Grossvater hebt ab (1998) [Ο παππούς πετάει,

2000], illustrated by Maria Blazejovsky, and Greek writer

Foteini Fragouli’s Το μισό πιθάρι (2000) [The half jar], illus-

trated by Evi Tsaknia. The young protagonists of these books

are introduced into questions of ageing and decay, and, thus,

inevitably of death, through an imaginative “travel” in time

and space which is engendered by their grandfather’s en-

chanting storytelling.

The creators of such modern picturebooks search for linguis-

tic codes suitable for expressing the unutterable loss of beloved

people. Picturebooks can vividly represent incidents from every-

day life, the character of a person, the physical environment and

also the setting in a remote time. Text and pictures work to-

gether not only to convey the story, but also to illustrate the

meaning of death both in a mimetic and direct way and also in

an allegorical and symbolic style (Mitchell, 1995). Additionally,

through their illustrated format, picturebooks develop their

characters and settings, without avoiding the condition of loss.

Moreover, visual symbolic language has a pervasive influence

on children, in the sense that it enables them to encounter the

feeling of loss, mainly of grandparents.

Grandparents’ Death in Two Picturebooks

Through the visual and textual approach of Sigrid Laube and

Foteini Fragouli’s books, we will examine the ways in which

the authors and illustrators portray the topic of death, especially

in picturebooks that pertain to the literary kind of fantastic lit-

erature (or even to the magic/“enchanted” realism and the liter-

ary fairytale respectively). According to Sheila A. Egoff (1988:

pp. 7-8), the protagonists of such kind of books “are not called

upon to participate in great events nor to test themselves against

seemingly overwhelming odds. The children of enchanted real-

ism do not change the world; instead they themselves are

changed by their heightened concept of reality”. In the books

we examine the heroes come to an understanding of the rituals

of life and death. In this kind of books, meanings like death can

be more easily perceived according to Ursula Le Guin’s belief

that “truth is a matter of imagination. Facts are about the out-

side. Truth is about the inside” (Yolen, 1985: p. 13). Fantasy,

first of all, returns to us what once belonged to us: the aware-

ness of the unity of the natural and supernatural worlds, a view

of our universe that was wrenched apart with the coming of the

“Age of Reason”. Therefore, fantasy, by its power to move us

so deeply or to dramatize morality, can be one of the most ef-

fective means of establishing a capacity for adult values.

Another element of the visual as well the verbal text which is

associated symbolically with the topic of death is nature. As we

shall see later on, death is a natural phenomenon associated

with the perennial circle of constant birth, loss and rebirth in the

green world. As all other natural phenomena, human life is

subjected to birth, decay and death. There are no moral or ethi-

cal dimensions in this process.

Sigrid Laube’s Grossvater hebt ab (2000) is a demanding yet

challenging gesture of artistic creation because of Maria Blaze-

jovsky’s illustrations. The text narrates grandfather and grand-

son’s imaginative travel in which they are both submitted. This

travel endures a whole day and it is com-

pleted at sunset. The two protagonists

visit dreamlike landscapes that are lo-

cated in the room as they are represented

in the initial double spread. The consecu-

tive scenes of their visits are but imagi-

nary flights to the different corners of the

grandfather’s room; the idyllic village is

inherented in the painted landscape hung

on the wall, the pasture with strawberries

is totally connected with the bowl on the table, full of this kind

of fruit. In addition to these images, we should note that the

protagonists’ encounter with the birds is repeated in the cover

of the book on the taboret—it refers to W. A. Mozart’s Magic

Flute and the garden with the bluebells constitutes a detail of

the vase with the blue flowers.

This framed and virtual travel alludes the emergency of the

grandfather’s health condition. The lyrical description of the

text and the constant repetition of grandfather’s figure who

travels in time and space with closed eyes is completed at the

end of the book with the crossed hands on the grandfather’s

K. D. MA LAFANTIS

chest and the flowers on his body that could echo funeral burial

customs (Meraklis, 1986).

Grandpa and grandson enter in an

imaginative world through the open

window which is represented in the

first pages of the picturebook and is

contradicted with the closed window

in the last page that marks the “clo-

sure” of a life cycle. Grandfather’s de-

parture is also pinpointed by the black-

bird’s song that “travels up, to the

sky” (Grossvater hebt ab: p. 33), the

nebula created by the white curtain,

the yellow butterfly that refers to virtual representations of

human soul. According to Marina Warner, the identification of

psyche and butterfly “operates at a deeper level within the syn-

tax of metaphor, in models of a generative process, which fig-

ures the emergent butterfly as the vital essence which is inher-

ent within the cocoon and other metamorphic stages” (Warner,

2007: p. 90). Furthermore, the sensation of body’s separation

from the psyche is enhanced by an angel’s faint presence in the

“real” life of the story. The textual narrative delineates the

grandfather’s death in an allusive

way, while the pictorial narrative

continues even after the end of the

story, transcending the limits of the

book in the inside cover. The young

hero, standing on a chair, salutes his

grandfather who sits on a star with

closed eyes and wearing his pajamas.

Grandfather’s sleep indicates the eter-

nity of death and the transfiguration

of beloved persons to stars-protectors,

according to ancient and religious conceptions about the transi-

tion of soul into heaven.

Sigrid Laube and Maria Blazejovsky, through words and col-

ors, describe in an imaginative way the end of the life cycle of

an elderly, who preserves a particularly valuable relationship

with his grandchild. The story that concludes with the grandfa-

ther’s death without any reference to a later grandson’s grief

reaction or to a burial process is located into a natural envi-

roment entirely familiar to the children. The little child and

consequently the young reader have experienced death through

an imaginable voyage in both microcosm and macrocosm of

nature where everything can happen. This way of experiencing

death is totally closed to the “Other World” children create

while they play. In other words, the world of “make-believe”

where everything can happen or be transformed into something

else facilitates children to experience everyday life in both a

fantastic and a mimetic way. The imaginative and playful travel

in space and time is totally based on grandfather and grand-

child’s real world. Real objects seem to solidify the “airy noth-

ing” (Shakespeare, 1595/2005: p. 419), for example, the flying

voyage with an umbrella. This fantastic story constitutes a

symbolic construction of everyday life that assays heroes and

reader’s personal and social experience. The creators challenge

the reader to participate in the imaginative world of the work, to

believe in all these skillfully made idle fantasies. The Other

World of fantasy enables the reader to keep a distance from the

real world and his conventions, in order to better understand

reality and the unutterable loss of beloved persons (Swinfen,

1984).

Foteini Fragouli’s intention in writing the illustrated story Το

μισό πιθάρι (The half jar, 2000) originates from her wish to

describe the country life of her na-

tive Aegean island, Lesvos. She

employs the style of fairytale in

order to give a lyrical tone to eve-

ryday life. This very usage creates a

world of fairy story, magic, and

supernaturalism belonging to mar-

vellous narrative overlaying the real

world. The indiscernible limits be-

tween “real” and “unreal” are accen-

tuated by Evi Tsaknia’s impres-

sionistic illustration. The Greek painter and illustrator uses

muted and faded colors, mainly the brownish and the light blue

tone, in order to portray Helen’s childhood summers with her

grandfather. Warm colors—reds, oranges, yellows—and cool

ones—blues and blue-greens—are in absolute harmony with

reds to highlight objects and the blue-green for backgrounds

(Nodelman, 1988).

Nevertheless, Fragouli’s work is

ba sed on a historical and social frame-

work, as particular references reveal.

The Greek island of Lesvos of the

1950s or 1960s functions as the back-

ground of significant historical events,

namely the surge of refugees after

the destruction of Asia Minor in

1922, and emigration of Greeks to

countries such as America or other

foreign lands. The historical elements are highlighted through

the relationship of a grandfather with his granddaughter. Espe-

cially, the story recounts the young protagonist’s childhood

memories of her grandfather; games, fairytales and secrets that

the two heroes share with each other.

The young protagonist, Helen, enjoys her grandfather’s story-

tellings about the objects that the sea transfers from the sea-

side of Asia Minor to their island such as infant toys, ornate

slippers or fragments from ancient vases. Every summer Helen

collects such “treasures” from the seashore as they convey

K. D. MA LAFANTIS

refugees’ memories. Additionally,

the heroine’s memories of her child-

hood are complemented by her

grandfather’s fairytales that con-

stitute a fairytale world where both

the grandchild and the reader can

discover hidden desires such as the

restoration to the lost homelands of

Asia Minor. Helen, even after her

grandfather’s death, feels his pres-

ence both in everyday life and her

dreams.

Many years after, the grandfather’s advice to Helen, through

a dream, “to love and to remember” the lost homelands (Το

μισό πιθάρι: p. 29), motivates the heroine to find in the cellar of

her house the punnets full of broken ancient vases which she

was collecting as a child from the beach every summer. The

granddaughter’s reinterpretation of the past helps her to better

understand her relationship with her grandfather as much as his

inevitable loss. The heroine returns to external life, rich from

experiences and treasures which she derived from the initiation

travel with her grandfather. The preservation of the deceased

grandfather’s memory signifies the symbolic triumph of life

over death, according to Petrarch’s idea of “fama” (Hardie,

2012).

Dreams and traditional stories combined will enable the

heroine to understand herself and realize that the half jar from

pieces—fragments of experiences and memories, songs and

stories—represents the water memory both of the other sea-

shore, the ancestral hearth of Asia Minor, and of her childhood.

Literature relying on that combination “can remind us of this

loophole in our rationality, and challenge our casual assurance,

particularly if the dream world asserts its own substantiality.

That dream may have as much validity as real life” (Hume,

1984: p. 127).

Foteini Fragouli’s authorial pen and Evi Tsaknia’s color pal-

ette create a dreamlike story in and out of time and space. Past

and present time are tied metaphorically with the “water chain”,

which is the Aegean Sea, and elucidate the meaning of in-

comprehensible words, such as the word “river”, that the

grandfather used to say every time he was narrating fairytales

and parables to his grandchild. The

seawater that both grandfather and

granddaughter are viewing invites them

to an imaginative voyage in a natural

environment. The heroes’ gaze acti-

vates memories, facts, historical pe-

riods, individual experiences, love,

pain, etc. The eyes, actually, do not

function as a mirror of nature, but as a

mirror of mind. The eye itself is the

vehicle of imaginative thought if we consider Aristotle’s decla-

ration in De Anima (III, vii. 15: pp. 176-177) that “The soul

never thinks without a mental image”. The young heroine will

never stop “communicating” with her grandfather as the reverie

of the birthplace of Asia Minor will connect the two of them

forever. The maritime birthplace has the power to give life even

to the lifeless and to make articulate even the mute, as Gaston

Bachelard has declared (1981).

Some Conclusions

The two picturebooks analyzed in this paper do not reenact

the figure of grandparent in a stereotypical way as a “set of

shared expectations focused upon a particular position” (Scott,

1970: p. 25; see also Beland & Mills, 2001; McElhoe, 1999).

These expectations, which include beliefs about what goals or

values the grandparent represents, are complemented by the

grandfather’s dreamlike representation. The imaginative de-

lineation of grandfather’s relationship with his grandchildren in

picturebooks and/or illustrated books attains a better result

when it provokes the young reader to stand back, take a second

look, doubt, and reflect (Zipes, 2009). It seems clear that deal-

ing with the meaning of death through fantasy or imagination is

beneficial for young people, because fantasy is considered as

the most valuable attribute of the human mind (Chukovsky,

1963). The imaginative approach of death has also therapeutic

value in the sense that it defuses children’s anxieties and facili-

tates the resolution of emotional conflicts (Bettelheim, 1976/

1995).

Furthermore, death comes to be viewed as simply a stage

toward reunion with eternal nature in the hereafter. The idea

that life is an eternal course which is never suspended, as the

beloved persons, even after their death, “exist” as psychological

presences, abolishes the sense of an ending. Instead, it subjects

the idea of continuity and equilibrium of nature which consists

a vivifying power, perfect and complete (“Yet nature is made

by no mean/but nature makes that mean”, as William Shake-

speare [1609-1610/2005: p. 1129] wrote). Text and pictures

invite young readers to incorporate themselves in the physical

universe and to synchronize their biological rhythm with the

imperturbable rhythm of the physical environment. In such a

context, the grandparent’s death is pictured as a “justifiable”

event, integrated in the life cycle. Bereavement and grief seem

to rely on the principal motifs of nature-as-space and nature-

as-knowledge, which eventually manage to negate the domin-

ion of death upon life.

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