Elisha Cox
Eng 102
Coraline -Neil Gaiman
Coraline Jones, is a young vibrant girl who seeks out adventure when she moves into her new house.Like any young child, her need for adventure calls to her, as she explores the new world that she has been thrown into.She has no choice but to go exploring as her parent are busy doing other things and there are no other kids around that she could keep her company, so she seeks on a quest to get to know her neighbors and her immediate surroundings.In her quest for knowledge, she makes new discoveries and encounters various characters within her journey. She meets Miss Spink and Miss Forcible who were once famous actresses, who lives in the flat below them and also the crazy man who lives upstairs who was training a mouse circus whom she thought, he was making up the entire time.
She doesn't stop just there, her curiosity has not yet been satisfied, so she seeks out to explore her surroundings, in the hope of finding something that eventually catches her attention.She explores the garden, an overgrown meadow and meets a black cat who never seemed to get close enough to her.
”I want to explore”(p.4) was what she told her parents one day, when she could not get outdoors due to impending rain.Her father suggests, that she explore the flat and suggested she count all the doors ,windows and everything blue and mark them down.And with this she made her greatest discovery which would change her life completely.
She discovers a big carved,brown wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room which was locked.She questions her mother as to what is behind that door, but her mother says, that there is nothing behind there , that it leads to know where.Which she immediately questions and says “It has to go somewhere.”(p.6) She is handed a bunch of keys so that she could see for herself that was nothing behind the door and it led to nowhere.
Her mother forgot to lock the door and that very night . She thought she heard something, a “kreee.........aaaak”(p8) down the hall and a distorted shadow standing in the drawing room of the house, it looked like a thin giant woman but the only thing that was there, when the lights were turned on, was the door which was left slightly ajar ,which she thinks, she witnessed her mother close shut, that very afternoon.
There is a thick layer of mist hanging in the air after the rains,which could be a sign,of an impending mystery or an evil presence lurking around..Coraline keeps on reinforcing the idea that she is an explorer over and over again, as she goes outside to explore the wet grounds, after a day spent locked indoors.There she meets the old man upstairs, who tells her that “the mice have a message for you... The message is this.Don't go through the door.”(p14), which she finds very puzzling and strange and does not know what it means.
Coraline tries desperately to get the attention of her parents as she returns home’ who pay her efforts little notice and shrug her off, and tells her to go look for the neighbors to keep her company, as they are very busy with other things.This intern, drives Coraline even more to find something to keep her interest and may have been the reason for her going into the other side of the door. She meets Miss Spink who reads the leaf in her tea and warns her that she in terrible danger and to not wear green.They also give her a stone with a hole in it which is meant to protect her.
At this point i do not think that Coralines future peril is a definite dream, as everyone around her is giving her warnings to stay away from the the door and that she is in danger.But she takes no heed to their warning and proceeds and does what she wants too.
Coraline insists on buying ‘GREEN GLOVES” the same colour they warned her not to wear instead of tired old “Grey ones” which made her blend in with everyone else, something that she was trying to avoid.But the colors themselves are symbolic as green represents life and a new start and grey represents gloom,death,something old and grey.
Boredom is something that coraline experiences a lot throughout the novel and this is the one thing that drives her to be adventurous and to search for new things.She stays behind on her mothers trip to the grocery store , where she is tempted yet again to go look for the keys to the big door.
She unlocks the door and discovers a hallway instead of the brick walls that was once blocking the entrance .She knew she was doing something wrong but something urged her along to step through the door and tread down the long dark corridor to other flat, oh so she thought. The corridor was a mirage of her home as it seemed familiar to her, but not quite ,as something was very different.There she discovers her other mother, whose skin was white as paper, who was taller and thinner,who had black gleaming button eyes(are the door to your soul) and whose fingers who were long and ever moving and whose dark red fingernails were curved and sharp(were spider like).She also met her other father who cooked real food unlike that of her dad and a room which seemed more interesting and lively than her own.
In this other world everything seems to be perfect but yet different as everything looked the same but wasn't exactly the same she had another mother and a father who were nothing like her parents.They had black buttons like that of a doll, which seemed unlifelike and motionless and her mother had hands of that of a spider, which was forever moving and always ready to pounce and a father, who just smiled and went along with everything.Her parents were not the same ones who raised her in the other house,everything seemed to have changed but the black cat who wasn't another anything but himself, which was just the cat.
The cat represented the one real thing that Coraline had left , the only thing that didn't change, when she crossed over to the other side.He made her fairytale become a reality and not just a need to explore a different world but one of survival and cunningness against the grasps of the other mother who wanted Coraline to become part of them , to be able to sew the large black buttons onto her eyes..He become her shining light ,the one who shed truth on the entire situation.
Coraline soons returns to her house where she discovers that her mother and father have not yet returned , they have been missing for a day or so. She feels lonely and has a sense of abandonment that her parents have left her to fend for herself. But little did she know, that by, crossing over to the other world, her parents had been stolen away, on the other side of the mirror down the hallway, by her other mother who intends on using them as a leverage for Coraline to become a part of their happy family.With the help of the cat she discovers her parents trapped behind a mirror,pleading for her to help them.She then realises how much she truly cares for her parents and how much they have done for her. And by losing them, she truly feels the love for them that she had buried deep within.
Coralines life changes from then on, as her journey is now a personal one which is to save her parents and return them to her world.She once again has to enter cross that passageway and to be brave for her parents even though she was scared to death of what would happen when she reached the other mother.She keeps on saying to herself “when you scared but you still do it anyway,thats brave”(p57).”I will be brave” “No i am brave”
Coraline finally realises that she does not want to live and interesting life ,where she gets everything her way and everything seems to be perfect ,she wants her parents back and confronts the other mother about .She finally finds her voice through her fears and uncomfort and demands for the safe return of her parents.But old mother tries to convince that her old parents have left her , that she will”never become bored” and “will never abandon”her.(p60).She reassures her that she will always be safe with her. The other mother tries to convince her that her parents have abandoned her showing her an image of them going on a vacation and having loads of fun without her which stung her and made tears welt up in her eyes but she did not believe that her parents would have done such a thing , that the image before her was not real , this did not exist, it was the mother trying to trick her to believe that her parents didn't need her anymore.
For the first time Coraline felt a strange sense of discomfort in the other house and the cat revisited her once again.The cat informs her that the other mother wants her because it wants somebody to love and “her kind of thing loves games and challenges.”(p63)
The world she was in now wasnt as interesting as it first turned out to be, now, it was “a pale nothing or an enormous,empty white room.It had no tempreture,no smell,no texture, and no tasste.”She wants again meets the cat who enlightens her once again about the other world who says to her “Spiders’s webs only have to be large enough to catch flies.” which makes refraince to the world that she is in. It basically means that although the world isn't as big as her other world she has been trapped and lured in by the other mother and may not be able to escape her clutches.
Coraline returns to her house once again and has to face her other mother , she has to return home once again to be with her real parents and that she has no plans to love her. For the first time she sees her other mother as who she really is, a creature and inanimate object ; as she gobbles down live beetles before her eyes.She does not accept the other mother as her mother and she throws her into a mirror and locks her inside.until she decides to come back to her senses.There she discovers three trapped souls left in the dark,whose souls hearts and lives had been taken away by the other mother and whom had been forgotten.
They warn her to flee this place while she still has life left in her, to never look back if she gets the chance to escape but she refuses to live until she saves her parents.She also embarks on another quest to free the souls of her new found friends.
She tells the other mother her fears when she lets her out,about the other children she has met in the mirror and how there was nothing left but an empty shell of what they use to be and is this is what she wants of her as well.But the other mother denies knowing of any other kids having ever existed and just says to her to not be silly that i'll always love you.
Coraline then proposes a game to the other mother as she does likes a good challenge.Coraline makes a proposal that if she finds each soul and her parents that the other mother must let her go as well as everyone else and if she loses then she will stay there forever and allow her to sew the black buttons into her eyes and love her and let her love her as well.She proposes an exploring game to find the dead children and her real mother and is skeptical whether or not the other mother would keep her side of the deal,she swears thst she would give her right hand.
And thus she begins her journey to help those who needed it most with little protection but the stone with the hole in it which allowed her to find the glow of the spirits who have been entrapped in various locations.She discovers the first child in the toy box in her room which angers the other mother who lashes out strong winds at her to deter her from continuing with her quest.She continues on to Miss forcible and Miss spinks flat where she discovers the second child stuck inside that thing on the wall.As sacred as she was she reached inside it ti grap the smooth surface of the marble and awakened the sleeping creature whom shouted”Theif !Give it back! Stop! Theif !”.She was beginning to destroy the world that the other mother had created.
The world she had come to known began to lose its form and started to seem hallow, “a formless swirling mist with no shapes or shadows behind it,while the house itself seemed to have twisted and stretched.” It seemed like it was no longer a house but a figure crouching down at her watching her every move.Her other mother was starting to get angrier at her Coraline finally realised that the other mother did not love her but wanted to claim her as her own and tried to trap by sending her down to the cellular to face what was left of the other father a monstrous lump of clay.She escapes him and reassures herself once again that she is brave.She treads on the the old mans flat where he and his rats try to convince her to stay there , that she would get anything she desires a green gloves ,food that doesn't have all the weird things she doesn't like if she gives into the other mothers desires.Coraline refuses his futile efforts and refocuses on getting the last dead child to free her parents and return to her own world.
Coraline fines the last marble but the rats escape with it, luckily for her the cat decapitates the rat and hand the marble back to her . Last but not list she has to find her parents so that they could finally live this dreadful world. The more she treads on ,the house starts to disappear , it starts to become nothing.
She returns to the house with the only friend she has which is the black cat.The mother tries once more to win Coralines love but she is more determined than ever to free her parents and to get out of this terrible place.For the very first time since meeting the other mother Coraline really saw her, she resembled a huge spider ,pale and long with ever moving fingers which resembled spider legs.There she tricks the other mother into revealing where her parents were. She knew she wasn't going to escape ,she knew the other mother would not let her go so she flung the cat directly at her and ran as fast as she could through the door and tried to slam it shut before the other mother came after her. She ran as fast as she could until she reached the other side ,she was brave , she was really brave.
Coraline was so grateful to be back in her real house , a real bedroom and to have a real parents back.She began to appreciate them even more knowing that she almost lost them .She showed them love and appreciation and ate up all her dads cooking without one ounce of a complaint.She falls asleep and dreams of the three children she saved , they are finally free , they are happy once again but they live her with a message that the other mother is angry with her and will never live her until she has her.
The other mother did not give up she was after Coralines key so she could unlock the door once again and build her world back and claim Coraline for herself.But Coraline had a trick of her own ,she intended to trap her hand in the well in the garden which she eventually did do.
In conclusion Coraline Started off as an orphan , a child seeking the love of others and a place where she felt like she belonged.She wasn't truly an orphan in the physical sense but emotionally she felt like she was abandoned by her family as they were too wrapped up in their own worlds to take notice of her and her needs.So she turns to a arcetype that we all poses which one of a seeker.Coraline says, over and over that she is an explorer.She likes making new discoveries and the biggest discovery she has made was to not to underestimate her self , she dicovers that she is braver than she belives her self to be and she should not let challenges make the best out of her.She has also learnt to not to be so self centered and inconsiderate of other peoples feelings and also torealise that her parents never stopped loveing her she just lost sight of what truly mattered.
She goes through a number of obstacles and trials which transforms her into a better individual.She also posses the warrior quality when she she defeats the other mother and stands up against all her fears and the scariest moments in her life.Step by step ,piece by piece she destroys the other house a piece of the life she may have wanted but later on regrets and comes to hate.She fights through her fears , her insecurities , her desires , her naivness and comes forward triumphant and anew.
Every one of us possess one or two or maybe all of these qualities we create a world where we can escape to whether it be during our showers, or a poem we write , a song we listen to . or a story we have read.We all try to create that perfect world where everything goes our way and there is no wrong in this world.We find a way to escape our reality when life seems to be to overwhelming and create our own battles, that we must overcome or have come to rise above the situation.Many of u, live lives like that of the characters we have read in a novel or another piece of literacy work, but we may not, have been able to use fancy words such as archetypes but are all able to identify with at least one major character.
Eng 102
Coraline -Neil Gaiman
Coraline Jones, is a young vibrant girl who seeks out adventure when she moves into her new house.Like any young child, her need for adventure calls to her, as she explores the new world that she has been thrown into.She has no choice but to go exploring as her parent are busy doing other things and there are no other kids around that she could keep her company, so she seeks on a quest to get to know her neighbors and her immediate surroundings.In her quest for knowledge, she makes new discoveries and encounters various characters within her journey. She meets Miss Spink and Miss Forcible who were once famous actresses, who lives in the flat below them and also the crazy man who lives upstairs who was training a mouse circus whom she thought, he was making up the entire time.
She doesn't stop just there, her curiosity has not yet been satisfied, so she seeks out to explore her surroundings, in the hope of finding something that eventually catches her attention.She explores the garden, an overgrown meadow and meets a black cat who never seemed to get close enough to her.
”I want to explore”(p.4) was what she told her parents one day, when she could not get outdoors due to impending rain.Her father suggests, that she explore the flat and suggested she count all the doors ,windows and everything blue and mark them down.And with this she made her greatest discovery which would change her life completely.
She discovers a big carved,brown wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room which was locked.She questions her mother as to what is behind that door, but her mother says, that there is nothing behind there , that it leads to know where.Which she immediately questions and says “It has to go somewhere.”(p.6) She is handed a bunch of keys so that she could see for herself that was nothing behind the door and it led to nowhere.
Her mother forgot to lock the door and that very night . She thought she heard something, a “kreee.........aaaak”(p8) down the hall and a distorted shadow standing in the drawing room of the house, it looked like a thin giant woman but the only thing that was there, when the lights were turned on, was the door which was left slightly ajar ,which she thinks, she witnessed her mother close shut, that very afternoon.
There is a thick layer of mist hanging in the air after the rains,which could be a sign,of an impending mystery or an evil presence lurking around..Coraline keeps on reinforcing the idea that she is an explorer over and over again, as she goes outside to explore the wet grounds, after a day spent locked indoors.There she meets the old man upstairs, who tells her that “the mice have a message for you... The message is this.Don't go through the door.”(p14), which she finds very puzzling and strange and does not know what it means.
Coraline tries desperately to get the attention of her parents as she returns home’ who pay her efforts little notice and shrug her off, and tells her to go look for the neighbors to keep her company, as they are very busy with other things.This intern, drives Coraline even more to find something to keep her interest and may have been the reason for her going into the other side of the door. She meets Miss Spink who reads the leaf in her tea and warns her that she in terrible danger and to not wear green.They also give her a stone with a hole in it which is meant to protect her.
At this point i do not think that Coralines future peril is a definite dream, as everyone around her is giving her warnings to stay away from the the door and that she is in danger.But she takes no heed to their warning and proceeds and does what she wants too.
Coraline insists on buying ‘GREEN GLOVES” the same colour they warned her not to wear instead of tired old “Grey ones” which made her blend in with everyone else, something that she was trying to avoid.But the colors themselves are symbolic as green represents life and a new start and grey represents gloom,death,something old and grey.
Boredom is something that coraline experiences a lot throughout the novel and this is the one thing that drives her to be adventurous and to search for new things.She stays behind on her mothers trip to the grocery store , where she is tempted yet again to go look for the keys to the big door.
She unlocks the door and discovers a hallway instead of the brick walls that was once blocking the entrance .She knew she was doing something wrong but something urged her along to step through the door and tread down the long dark corridor to other flat, oh so she thought. The corridor was a mirage of her home as it seemed familiar to her, but not quite ,as something was very different.There she discovers her other mother, whose skin was white as paper, who was taller and thinner,who had black gleaming button eyes(are the door to your soul) and whose fingers who were long and ever moving and whose dark red fingernails were curved and sharp(were spider like).She also met her other father who cooked real food unlike that of her dad and a room which seemed more interesting and lively than her own.
In this other world everything seems to be perfect but yet different as everything looked the same but wasn't exactly the same she had another mother and a father who were nothing like her parents.They had black buttons like that of a doll, which seemed unlifelike and motionless and her mother had hands of that of a spider, which was forever moving and always ready to pounce and a father, who just smiled and went along with everything.Her parents were not the same ones who raised her in the other house,everything seemed to have changed but the black cat who wasn't another anything but himself, which was just the cat.
The cat represented the one real thing that Coraline had left , the only thing that didn't change, when she crossed over to the other side.He made her fairytale become a reality and not just a need to explore a different world but one of survival and cunningness against the grasps of the other mother who wanted Coraline to become part of them , to be able to sew the large black buttons onto her eyes..He become her shining light ,the one who shed truth on the entire situation.
Coraline soons returns to her house where she discovers that her mother and father have not yet returned , they have been missing for a day or so. She feels lonely and has a sense of abandonment that her parents have left her to fend for herself. But little did she know, that by, crossing over to the other world, her parents had been stolen away, on the other side of the mirror down the hallway, by her other mother who intends on using them as a leverage for Coraline to become a part of their happy family.With the help of the cat she discovers her parents trapped behind a mirror,pleading for her to help them.She then realises how much she truly cares for her parents and how much they have done for her. And by losing them, she truly feels the love for them that she had buried deep within.
Coralines life changes from then on, as her journey is now a personal one which is to save her parents and return them to her world.She once again has to enter cross that passageway and to be brave for her parents even though she was scared to death of what would happen when she reached the other mother.She keeps on saying to herself “when you scared but you still do it anyway,thats brave”(p57).”I will be brave” “No i am brave”
Coraline finally realises that she does not want to live and interesting life ,where she gets everything her way and everything seems to be perfect ,she wants her parents back and confronts the other mother about .She finally finds her voice through her fears and uncomfort and demands for the safe return of her parents.But old mother tries to convince that her old parents have left her , that she will”never become bored” and “will never abandon”her.(p60).She reassures her that she will always be safe with her. The other mother tries to convince her that her parents have abandoned her showing her an image of them going on a vacation and having loads of fun without her which stung her and made tears welt up in her eyes but she did not believe that her parents would have done such a thing , that the image before her was not real , this did not exist, it was the mother trying to trick her to believe that her parents didn't need her anymore.
For the first time Coraline felt a strange sense of discomfort in the other house and the cat revisited her once again.The cat informs her that the other mother wants her because it wants somebody to love and “her kind of thing loves games and challenges.”(p63)
The world she was in now wasnt as interesting as it first turned out to be, now, it was “a pale nothing or an enormous,empty white room.It had no tempreture,no smell,no texture, and no tasste.”She wants again meets the cat who enlightens her once again about the other world who says to her “Spiders’s webs only have to be large enough to catch flies.” which makes refraince to the world that she is in. It basically means that although the world isn't as big as her other world she has been trapped and lured in by the other mother and may not be able to escape her clutches.
Coraline returns to her house once again and has to face her other mother , she has to return home once again to be with her real parents and that she has no plans to love her. For the first time she sees her other mother as who she really is, a creature and inanimate object ; as she gobbles down live beetles before her eyes.She does not accept the other mother as her mother and she throws her into a mirror and locks her inside.until she decides to come back to her senses.There she discovers three trapped souls left in the dark,whose souls hearts and lives had been taken away by the other mother and whom had been forgotten.
They warn her to flee this place while she still has life left in her, to never look back if she gets the chance to escape but she refuses to live until she saves her parents.She also embarks on another quest to free the souls of her new found friends.
She tells the other mother her fears when she lets her out,about the other children she has met in the mirror and how there was nothing left but an empty shell of what they use to be and is this is what she wants of her as well.But the other mother denies knowing of any other kids having ever existed and just says to her to not be silly that i'll always love you.
Coraline then proposes a game to the other mother as she does likes a good challenge.Coraline makes a proposal that if she finds each soul and her parents that the other mother must let her go as well as everyone else and if she loses then she will stay there forever and allow her to sew the black buttons into her eyes and love her and let her love her as well.She proposes an exploring game to find the dead children and her real mother and is skeptical whether or not the other mother would keep her side of the deal,she swears thst she would give her right hand.
And thus she begins her journey to help those who needed it most with little protection but the stone with the hole in it which allowed her to find the glow of the spirits who have been entrapped in various locations.She discovers the first child in the toy box in her room which angers the other mother who lashes out strong winds at her to deter her from continuing with her quest.She continues on to Miss forcible and Miss spinks flat where she discovers the second child stuck inside that thing on the wall.As sacred as she was she reached inside it ti grap the smooth surface of the marble and awakened the sleeping creature whom shouted”Theif !Give it back! Stop! Theif !”.She was beginning to destroy the world that the other mother had created.
The world she had come to known began to lose its form and started to seem hallow, “a formless swirling mist with no shapes or shadows behind it,while the house itself seemed to have twisted and stretched.” It seemed like it was no longer a house but a figure crouching down at her watching her every move.Her other mother was starting to get angrier at her Coraline finally realised that the other mother did not love her but wanted to claim her as her own and tried to trap by sending her down to the cellular to face what was left of the other father a monstrous lump of clay.She escapes him and reassures herself once again that she is brave.She treads on the the old mans flat where he and his rats try to convince her to stay there , that she would get anything she desires a green gloves ,food that doesn't have all the weird things she doesn't like if she gives into the other mothers desires.Coraline refuses his futile efforts and refocuses on getting the last dead child to free her parents and return to her own world.
Coraline fines the last marble but the rats escape with it, luckily for her the cat decapitates the rat and hand the marble back to her . Last but not list she has to find her parents so that they could finally live this dreadful world. The more she treads on ,the house starts to disappear , it starts to become nothing.
She returns to the house with the only friend she has which is the black cat.The mother tries once more to win Coralines love but she is more determined than ever to free her parents and to get out of this terrible place.For the very first time since meeting the other mother Coraline really saw her, she resembled a huge spider ,pale and long with ever moving fingers which resembled spider legs.There she tricks the other mother into revealing where her parents were. She knew she wasn't going to escape ,she knew the other mother would not let her go so she flung the cat directly at her and ran as fast as she could through the door and tried to slam it shut before the other mother came after her. She ran as fast as she could until she reached the other side ,she was brave , she was really brave.
Coraline was so grateful to be back in her real house , a real bedroom and to have a real parents back.She began to appreciate them even more knowing that she almost lost them .She showed them love and appreciation and ate up all her dads cooking without one ounce of a complaint.She falls asleep and dreams of the three children she saved , they are finally free , they are happy once again but they live her with a message that the other mother is angry with her and will never live her until she has her.
The other mother did not give up she was after Coralines key so she could unlock the door once again and build her world back and claim Coraline for herself.But Coraline had a trick of her own ,she intended to trap her hand in the well in the garden which she eventually did do.
In conclusion Coraline Started off as an orphan , a child seeking the love of others and a place where she felt like she belonged.She wasn't truly an orphan in the physical sense but emotionally she felt like she was abandoned by her family as they were too wrapped up in their own worlds to take notice of her and her needs.So she turns to a arcetype that we all poses which one of a seeker.Coraline says, over and over that she is an explorer.She likes making new discoveries and the biggest discovery she has made was to not to underestimate her self , she dicovers that she is braver than she belives her self to be and she should not let challenges make the best out of her.She has also learnt to not to be so self centered and inconsiderate of other peoples feelings and also torealise that her parents never stopped loveing her she just lost sight of what truly mattered.
She goes through a number of obstacles and trials which transforms her into a better individual.She also posses the warrior quality when she she defeats the other mother and stands up against all her fears and the scariest moments in her life.Step by step ,piece by piece she destroys the other house a piece of the life she may have wanted but later on regrets and comes to hate.She fights through her fears , her insecurities , her desires , her naivness and comes forward triumphant and anew.
Every one of us possess one or two or maybe all of these qualities we create a world where we can escape to whether it be during our showers, or a poem we write , a song we listen to . or a story we have read.We all try to create that perfect world where everything goes our way and there is no wrong in this world.We find a way to escape our reality when life seems to be to overwhelming and create our own battles, that we must overcome or have come to rise above the situation.Many of u, live lives like that of the characters we have read in a novel or another piece of literacy work, but we may not, have been able to use fancy words such as archetypes but are all able to identify with at least one major character.
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