Preludes and Nocturnes is a volume of The Sandman that focuses mainly on Morpheus (the lord of dreams) in his quest to freedom. Morpheus has been captured by Roderick Burgess, a knockoff Aleister Crowley (occultist) who seeks knowledge from ghosts or demons. Burgess wanted to capture Death, but instead, he captures Dream and imprisons him.This volume highlights his journey to freedom and his quest to re-establish his powers.

In The Sandman, personifications have been done for several concepts such as death and sleep, to come up with interesting characters. Morpheus is one of those characters. Unlike in Fables, where most of the characters are based on folklore and fairy tales; and whose nature is linked to a moral, The Sandman uses rules, more than morals to achieve their goals. Morpheus has to fight several characters to regain his realm, depicting violence as a necessary evil as long as the rules are not broken. For instance, he has to fight Choronzon, a demon to regain his helmet. He does this to respect a challenge he made with the demon, “It is time for me to walk the abyss. Time to reclaim my own. I must talk to the Morningstar. I do not have high hopes for the meeting (Bender et al. 2005).

In the case of Fables, morals always seem to guide the characters towards their quests. The characters’ actions are driven by values that help them achieve their goals.  In The Sandman, Morpheus is driven by his urge to regain his realm despite the actions he has to do on the way. This is evident in cases where he kills or curses his enemies in contrast to the moral of forgiveness. However, it would be prejudicial to overlook the lesson learnt from Morpheus’ quests; as he speaks to the raven, a lesson that is evident is that escaping fate may be possible only that the costs and risks involved are very much unacceptable

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