Coraline

By Neil Gaiman

Last year I had watched this movie off Netflix and thought it was creepy, artistic, and bizarre. It is in claymation which is able to add to it. This year in quarantine I decided to check out the book because I remembered liking the movie so much. I made the mistake of reading it late at night after I had finished my schoolwork. There’s something about that book that is so alluring but unnerving about it. Later, when I was finished with the book, I watched the once more. Here is a summery of both the book and movies adaptations combined.

The book is about a girl named Coraline who loves adventures and exploring. It opens with her and her two parents just moving into a large, old house called The Pink Palace that was made into apartments. She has very peculiar neighbors. Miss Spinks and Miss Forcible are retired actresses who live with a great many dogs and Mr. Bobo trains a mouse circus that is not ready to be shown yet. Coraline’s parents are some sort of authors and work from home most of the time. They are most often preoccupied with their work and don’t like to be disturbed by their daughter. One day it rains and Coraline discovers a locked door. When she opens it with a key, she finds it to be locked. That night, she follows a rat to the door only to find that it is open ajar and has a tunnel running through it. She enters, and on the other side she finds a replica of her own apartment on the other side. The only obvious difference is that her parents have buttons for eyes ad are much more attentive towards her. The woman with the likeness of her mother tells her that she is her “Other Mother” and the man is her “Other Father.” Everything about this other world is improved and more interesting than her real home. Miss Spinks and Forcible are really beautiful, young, talented women and Mr. Bobo has an amazing rat circus. Her Other Mother’s cooking is exquisite and everything is interesting. Her Other Mother tells her that she can stay forever only if she sews buttons over her eyes. Coraline refuses and the Other Mother puts her into a mirror that contains a space the size of a broom closet. There, she meets the lost souls. They tell her what they remember about their past lives and how the they sewed buttons over their eyes. The explain how Other Mother, or the Beldam, was able to keep them there and feed off of their souls. Their souls are still in the Other World but hidden. They beg Coraline to leave while she still has a beating heart and breath in her lungs. Coraline escapes and flees the Other World only to find her real parents are gone. She visits the two women below and is given a rock with a hole in it which is good for bad things as they said. She goes back home and sees her parents through a mirror and realizes that the Beldam took them. She knows she must venture back to the other world. The neighborhood cat informs her that the Beldam likes games. There is no promise that she will play fair but she cannot resist them. They set off together. She makes a deal with the Beldam that if she is able to find all the lost souls of the children and her parents, the Beldam will set them all free. If she cannot, she will sew the buttons. The Beldam swears by this on her mothers grave and then on her right hand. She gives a clue about where the souls could be found. Coraline ends up finding the souls and her parents and is able to escape. Unfortunately, the Beldam’s hand also escapes through the door. It seeks the key. Coraline, in the end is able to lure the hand to an old well and trap it down there along with the key to the door. She has a new appreciation for the life she has.

The book and movie are very different as far as the length of events and characters themselves. Coraline in the movie is a little grumpy and rude. She isn’t kind to her neighbors and is outwardly annoyed with her parents. The book portrays her as a little nicer than that. She may think some of the same things as the movie version but she is polite and controls her harsh tongue. Her parents are also a lot kinder to her. The movie shows them to be workaholics who consider their child a nuisance. The parents are less blunt and it is never doubted that they love her.

The cat is such an interesting character. I didn’t explain much about him in the summery but he is peculiar. He knows all about the Other World and is able to travel to and from freely. He claims that there are ways even the Beldam doesn’t know of. He’s the kind of character that you hate but trust wholeheartedly. The cat only talks to Coraline in the Other World and when he does, he is mysterious, unpleasant, and cryptic. There is nothing sweet about him but you only feel safe when he is with Coraline. My favorite scene with him was when the Beldam is collapsing the Other World she created and the ways the cat could come and go from are destroyed. The most satisfying and sweet thing happens. The cat becomes afraid. It is most satisfying because he was always so confident and unkind. But now since he has no easy exit, he is dependent on Coraline to get him out. It is described that he climbs into her arms. She can feel the cat’s fast beating heart and that it is shaking. This just seems so adorable and warmed my heart when I read it. I think I felt this way because I could finally see some vulnerability in this cat. This strange character that frustrates our protagonist and seems completely unafraid in all situations.

In my explanation of the story it didn’t seem all that freaky, I don’t think. I think what makes the story so scary is the language which it’s written. The author wrote it in a way that would make it easy enough for a child to understand. This confused me and made me question if I had the right book at first. As I read on, the plot became more and more unnerving. The author would describe certain aspects of the Other World that would make my skin crawl. He was able to give the perfect imagery. Some of the things he compared different aspects to gave me the perfect picture to what he was trying to portray. If I had not seen the movie first, this is what would have made me suspicious of the Other World. It guided the way I thought about the world and made me uncomfortable.

It was really creative how the author presented the Other Mother and her world. She actually created the scene but probably not the world its self. She watches the children in the house and is able to pinpoint exactly what they are dissatisfied with in it. She cannot create anything, only distort. Also, she only makes as much as she thinks will impress the child. There wasn’t much effort put into the back of the forest because she didn’t count on Coraline going over there. It was really interesting how her love for Coraline was described. She wants something to love but she would love Coraline as “a miser loves his gold.” The Other Father was simply creature the Beldam created to portray the replica of the real world. It is shown that he is good but is also controlled by the Beldam. He tries to help Coraline but isn’t able to resist the Other Mother’s power over him.

There are a few themes in this book but the one I really got the most out of was true courage and bravery. It was described beautifully through a story Coraline told the cat on her way to the Other world. It was that courage is only real courage when one is scared first. In her recollection she talks about how one day she was walking with her father and one of them steps on a wasp hive. Her father tells her to run and she does while he stayed and kept the wasps from focusing on his daughter. She was spared while he was not. Later, he realized he had dropped his glasses and had to go back for them. He tells Coraline that he was not scared while he was being stung and bitten while she was running away because he knew she’d be spared. He was afraid when he went back for his glasses and that was true courage. Courage starts with fear. It really added to the story’s overall message and helped to secure the knowledge that the parents really do love their daughter. This was not in the movie and I think it would have been really cool to see it there.

I’m sure it is obvious, but I prefer the book over the movie. It may be one of my favorites, I enjoyed it that much. I really recommend reading and watching the movie. I got so much out of it and enjoyed discussing it immensely. I am very sorry you had to read so much