Neil Gaiman’s idea of Hell is not at all typical. The color palette isn’t limited to dark, darker, and darkest, and the landscape does not appear dangerous. No, Gaiman’s Hell is more depressed than angry. The colors are pastels – grays, purples, browns, and dusky pinks – filling a landscape that resembles an open wound. The mountain on the Plains of Hell that Morpheus, Lucifer, Azazel, and Beezlebub stand upon while looking for Morpheus’s helmet looks like an artery, an exposed organ, while the Woods of Suicide bleed despair. Hell itself is not monstrous, in Gaiman’s eyes, but many of its residents are.
The desolate landscapes of Hell are filled with grotesque creatures that wouldn’t be out of place catching water on the sides of gothic cathedrals. They are gruesome caricatures of men and animals, fleshed out with detail and shading. As Scott McCloud might say, instead of “[allowing] readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world”, the simple geography of Hell in “The Sandman” allow readers to step into Gaiman’s world without being caught in identification with its more horrific occupants.
Now the scene has been set. We’re in Hell, alongside monsters and souls trapped in the Deep. Enter the major players: Morpheus, drawn in dark colors and plagued by loneliness, the (anti)Hero vs. Lucifer, the fallen Morningstar whose angelic appearance sets him apart from his compatriots; Beezlebub and Azazel, both monstrous, and their demon armies.
While watching Morpheus and Choronzon duel in The Hellfire Club, we see that this is the fundamental struggle between dark and light, between “Anti-Life….The Dark at the End of Everything” (125) and “Hope” (125). But Morpheus, whose deathly pale skin, shadowed eyes, and black hair appear almost sinister, is on the side of Hope. He’s the Anti-hero, standing against Lucifer and refusing to submit to Hell’s power. He’s flawed, lonely, dark, and in a realm beyond his own Dreamworld, but confident that his own power remains because Hell itself would have no power “if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven” (128).
After all, it’s all about contrast. Hell to Heaven. Dark to Light. Anti-life to Hope. In the words of Milton:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (254-255)."