Blues and Reds

I have never read anything like "The Sandman." I loved the way it invoked realism and also incorporated fantasy and even symbolism. It is the type of book that after finishing it, I cannot seem to stop thinking about it. I wanted to know the significance of Dream's dark personality.

He is usually wearing something dark/blue and something ominous like a massive cloak or trench coat and is very often pessimistic seeming. I thought this could be a commentary on the nature of dreams themselves (that we often dream of things we are scared of) or if it was intended to turn our concept of death upside down (the fact that his character could easily be taken for Death, but is actually DREAM is interesting to me). This led me to ask what is the significance of the color blue and its relationship to Dream?

In almost every panel of Dream blue is accented or stands out. His hair, skin, cloak, and even his eyes. When we see things from his perspective everything is in blue.McCloud says, "Colors could express a dominant mood and whole scenes could be virtually about color." Page 34 you see Dream's face for the first time and his eyes, hair, and the bubble he is in is blue. Normally blue indicated calmness or serenity. To me, this effect of blue makes me think of Dream more as the ocean. It can be calm and beautiful yet it can also be powerful and dangerous.

I also wanted to find the significance of Dream and the red. Dream's cloak is the only thing that ever is seen as red. It seems to me that red signifies the supernatural. His cloak is always red when the hem of it is contains faces (maybe dreams?? pg. 89) and most of the time in hell or the dreamworld its red (pg 191). If red usually means anger and blue usually means calm then what is the significance of that?

Is the author trying to say that life is more calm then dreams or that dreams are filled with anger and the supernatural? Even Death's character is more happy and peppy than Dream. Maybe it is as simple as we are being warned of the power of dreams and being told to pay attention to them.