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 parents are busy doing other things and there are no other kids around that 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.
From the beginning, Coraline is portrayed 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 wants and needs. So, she turns to a archetype that we all poses, which is one of the seeker.
Boredom is something that Coraline experiences throughout the novel and this is the one thing that drives her to be adventurous and to search for new things. We see this archetype really strongly when she crosses over to the other world, despite warnings from 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.”(pg 41) and from Miss Spink, who reads the leaf in her tea and warns her that she is in terrible danger and to not wear green.Like the explorer she says she is, she dismisses the warnings and does what she knows best , what she loves to do the most, which is exploring. She continues to say to herself, that she is an explorer throughout the entire novel and her need for discovery leads her to her world, like that of her own, but very different, in subtle ways.
She discovers a big carved,brown wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room which was shut tight.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.Coraline immediately questions her mother 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. But little did she know, that by, opening that door she had let in a creature which would try to win her love and claim her as her own.This creature will first be seen, as the light to her world, but would later turn into her adversary , the one thing that pushes her and propels all of the qualities that we lacked seeing in the beginning of the novel.
By her being as stubborn and adventurous as she is ,her crossing over to the other world brought about her parents being taken away, by the creature, which lurked in the darkness. She uses them as bait to capture Coraline and intends to use them as a leverage for her to become a part of their happy family.
This door becomes a world of its own, a gateway for Coraline to reach her parents as in that instant, she steps through that door nothing is the same any more.She has released a creature that she will soon come to know.One that she has to defeat and be conniving in order to come out triumphant and with this we see an archetype in Coraline that wasn't there to begin with , which is that of the warrior archetype.
She has entered uncharted territory and must face an adventure she does not expect.She has to be brave and says to her self at some point “when you scared but you still do it anyway, thats brave”(pg 57).” I will be brave” No i am brave.”when she stands up against the other mother to save herself her parents and the lost souls in the closet.
Coraline faces diversities that she was not prepared for,she has to face off with her disfigured other father to free herself from being stuck there forever , from the creature that was stuck to the wall in the theatre who shouted back at her “Thief ! Give it back ! Stop ! Thief ! (pg 62)She stands up against them despite all her fears and doubts with little armour but a stone with a hole in it which really was just there to protect her from something which i, nor her self even knew.
She finally snaps back into reality and her view of the other world is not as interesting as it semeed to be , it was a “pale nothing or an enormous,empty white room.It had no tempreture , no smell, no texture, and no taste.” (pg 64) and her life has finally changed as the images in her head isn't the same anymore , she doesn't want that life she always thought she wanted, so she fights through her fears and insecurities ,her desires, her naivness and comes forward triumphant and anew. She didn't want to end up like the children that she had discovered behind the mirror , she didn't want to love the other mother , she wanted her life back she wanted her family back and she wanted the other children to be free once again, so she makes a proposal an exploring game that is , 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 allow herself to love her and vice versa.
Although she is skeptical of whether or not the other mother would keep her side of the deal,she swears that she would give her right hand.Coraline has to be sly to survive and has also has to think at the top of her head and be resilient , brave and face challenges that she thought she would lose. And this qualites are all part of the warrior archetype which is one of the strongest archetypes that represents her.
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.
She angers the other mother who lashes out strong winds at her to deter her from continuing with her quest as she has discovered the first lost soul. She continues on despite what has happening around her ,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 to grab the smooth surface of the marble and awakened the sleeping creature whom shouted”Thief !Give it back! Stop! Thief !”.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 hollow, “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.
Step by grueling step, piece by piece ,she destroys the other house. A piece of her life ,that she thought she wanted but later on regrets and comes to hate; by discovering the lost souls of the children her other mother had stolen the perfect world that she had created and it started to fall apart , everything seemed to shrink back into the nothing that it was.The world she had come to known began to lose its form and started to seem hollow ,”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 no longer looked like her mother but a creature and inanimate object that she no longer recognised. She finds her voice through her fears and uncomfort and demands for the safe return of her parents and the entities.
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 later 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 a young naive innocent child who felt abandoned and betrayed by the ones she loved.Her only solace was the need for adventure and exploring.She cared little for the needs of others and was very self absorbed with her own problems and lives. She paid little attention to authority and disregarded the warnings that persons did give her. She has discovered that she should not , underestimate her self and that she is braver than she believes herself to be and she should not let her adversities 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 to realise that her parents never stopped loving her, she just lost sight of what truly mattered. She also realises that her needs and wants did over cloud her judgement and finally realised how important her family was to her, regardless of the weird foods her father cooked and her mother being so emotionless and goal .She finds her voice through her fears and uncomfort and demands for the safe return of her parents and the entities.She goes through a number of obstacle and trials which transform her into a better individual.She discovers that she is braver than she thought she ever was and learnt to appreciate the little things she has in her life and not be a self absorbed brat.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 parents are busy doing other things and there are no other kids around that 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.
From the beginning, Coraline is portrayed 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 wants and needs. So, she turns to a archetype that we all poses, which is one of the seeker.
Boredom is something that Coraline experiences throughout the novel and this is the one thing that drives her to be adventurous and to search for new things. We see this archetype really strongly when she crosses over to the other world, despite warnings from 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.”(pg 41) and from Miss Spink, who reads the leaf in her tea and warns her that she is in terrible danger and to not wear green.Like the explorer she says she is, she dismisses the warnings and does what she knows best , what she loves to do the most, which is exploring. She continues to say to herself, that she is an explorer throughout the entire novel and her need for discovery leads her to her world, like that of her own, but very different, in subtle ways.
She discovers a big carved,brown wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room which was shut tight.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.Coraline immediately questions her mother 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. But little did she know, that by, opening that door she had let in a creature which would try to win her love and claim her as her own.This creature will first be seen, as the light to her world, but would later turn into her adversary , the one thing that pushes her and propels all of the qualities that we lacked seeing in the beginning of the novel.
By her being as stubborn and adventurous as she is ,her crossing over to the other world brought about her parents being taken away, by the creature, which lurked in the darkness. She uses them as bait to capture Coraline and intends to use them as a leverage for her to become a part of their happy family.
This door becomes a world of its own, a gateway for Coraline to reach her parents as in that instant, she steps through that door nothing is the same any more.She has released a creature that she will soon come to know.One that she has to defeat and be conniving in order to come out triumphant and with this we see an archetype in Coraline that wasn't there to begin with , which is that of the warrior archetype.
She has entered uncharted territory and must face an adventure she does not expect.She has to be brave and says to her self at some point “when you scared but you still do it anyway, thats brave”(pg 57).” I will be brave” No i am brave.”when she stands up against the other mother to save herself her parents and the lost souls in the closet.
Coraline faces diversities that she was not prepared for,she has to face off with her disfigured other father to free herself from being stuck there forever , from the creature that was stuck to the wall in the theatre who shouted back at her “Thief ! Give it back ! Stop ! Thief ! (pg 62)She stands up against them despite all her fears and doubts with little armour but a stone with a hole in it which really was just there to protect her from something which i, nor her self even knew.
She finally snaps back into reality and her view of the other world is not as interesting as it semeed to be , it was a “pale nothing or an enormous,empty white room.It had no tempreture , no smell, no texture, and no taste.” (pg 64) and her life has finally changed as the images in her head isn't the same anymore , she doesn't want that life she always thought she wanted, so she fights through her fears and insecurities ,her desires, her naivness and comes forward triumphant and anew. She didn't want to end up like the children that she had discovered behind the mirror , she didn't want to love the other mother , she wanted her life back she wanted her family back and she wanted the other children to be free once again, so she makes a proposal an exploring game that is , 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 allow herself to love her and vice versa.
Although she is skeptical of whether or not the other mother would keep her side of the deal,she swears that she would give her right hand.Coraline has to be sly to survive and has also has to think at the top of her head and be resilient , brave and face challenges that she thought she would lose. And this qualites are all part of the warrior archetype which is one of the strongest archetypes that represents her.
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.
She angers the other mother who lashes out strong winds at her to deter her from continuing with her quest as she has discovered the first lost soul. She continues on despite what has happening around her ,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 to grab the smooth surface of the marble and awakened the sleeping creature whom shouted”Thief !Give it back! Stop! Thief !”.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 hollow, “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.
Step by grueling step, piece by piece ,she destroys the other house. A piece of her life ,that she thought she wanted but later on regrets and comes to hate; by discovering the lost souls of the children her other mother had stolen the perfect world that she had created and it started to fall apart , everything seemed to shrink back into the nothing that it was.The world she had come to known began to lose its form and started to seem hollow ,”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 no longer looked like her mother but a creature and inanimate object that she no longer recognised. She finds her voice through her fears and uncomfort and demands for the safe return of her parents and the entities.
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 later 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.
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 you , 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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