Stella Nickerson
Nickerson i
Stella Nickerson
Mrs. E. Richardson
British Literature
19 November 2007
Something Sinister in Coraline
As a children’s novel, Coraline is never gory or overtly terrifying, yet it manages to maintain a disturbing and creepy mood throughout; Gaiman accomplishes this through a use of foreshadowing, the physical descriptions of the other characters, and a subtle tone.
I. Foreshadowing.
A. Coraline’s dream of singing black shapes
B. Misses Spink and Forcible’s prediction that Coraline is in danger
C. Mice’s warning not to go through the door
II. Character descriptions
A. All other characters
1. Pale
2. Thin
3. Button eyes
B. Other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible
1. Young
2. Pretty
C. Other crazy old man upstairs
1. Awful smelling apartment
2. Raspy, whispery voice
3. Swarm of rats
D. Other mother
1. Constantly moving fingers
2. Sharp, red nails
3. Long teeth
4. Moving hair
III. Subtle tone
A. Simple prose style
B. Understatement
1. Button eyes “just a little thing”
2. Spink and Forcible’s warning very matter-of-fact
C. Quiet humor
1. Cat’s comment about dancing elephants
2. Other mother’s “believes in ghosts” remark
D. No gore
1. Children forgotten about and left in the dark, not eaten
2. Only implied violence in button-and-thread scene
Nickerson i
Stella Nickerson
Mrs. E. Richardson
British Literature
19 November 2007
Something Sinister in Coraline
In Coraline by Neil Gaiman, the title character, a little girl, finds her way through a sometimes-bricked up door to an alternate version of her apartment building. There, she encounters her “other parents,” who try to convince her to stay with them. Coraline escapes only to find that her real parents have vanished, and she must travel back to the alternate world to win their freedom from the other mother. As a children’s novel, Coraline is never gory or overtly terrifying, yet it manages to maintain a disturbing and creepy mood throughout; Gaiman accomplishes this through a use of foreshadowing, the physical descriptions of the other characters, and a subtle tone.
Gaiman begins foreshadowing the dark happenings in store for Coraline as early as the first chapter, when Coraline sees a small black shape flit through the darkness of her flat. After returning to bed, she dreams of dark shapes with red eyes that sing, “We were there before you rose / We will be there when you fall” (Gaiman 12). From the beginning, then, readers are introduced to the idea that Coraline might “fall” before the end. After Coraline’s own prescient dream, other characters living in Coraline’s building contribute further to the foreshadowing. Miss Spink, one of a pair of retired actresses, reads Coraline’s tea leaves and tells her, “You know Caroline… you are in terrible danger” (20). Nor are readers in any doubt about when or where Coraline will be exposed to this danger. The crazy old man upstairs—who trains mice to perform in a circus—has already given Coraline a message from the mice: “Don’t go through the door” (16). The readers don’t know quite what to think of this warning. Is the crazy old man upstairs really crazy? Do his mice really talk to him in between training to sing and play? It is true that the mice know Coraline’s name—Coraline, while the crazy old man upstairs thinks she is named Caroline. Clearly they have a grasp on the truth. When Coraline does, in fact, go through the door, the readers know that danger awaits her on the other side. Because of Gaiman’s use of foreshadowing, an ominous mood has already been established.
The ominous mood is further enhanced by the fact that the foreshadowing is vague. Coraline does not know what the black shapes are. When she asks Misses Spink and Forcible what sort of danger she is in, they answer that they cannot tell her because “tea leaves aren’t good for that sort of thing” (20). The mice do not further elaborate why Coraline should not go through the door. Because of the vague nature of the host of forewarnings presented to Coraline and the audience during the first part of the book, she and they do not know what is in store for her. They are jumpy and alert, unaware of what form the danger will take, though they do know it lies beyond the door. When Coraline discovers that the bricked-up door has opened to a dark passage, she takes it despite the mice’s warning because of her intrepid explorer’s nature, but those watching her are on edge and expectant. Gaiman, in an interview on Minnesota Public Radio, talks about the different ways that Coraline affects children and adults. He says that for adults it is a far scarier story, because for children Coraline is the identification character and they are fairly certain she will get out okay, but for adults Coraline is “the story of a child in danger, and it worries them,” (Interview). That worry is built up through the foreshadowing that the readers, particularly adult readers, seem to take far more seriously than does Coraline. In as far as the opening of any story begins the building of mood, foreshadowing is integral to Coraline’s sinister aura.
The very characters who warn Coraline of the danger beyond the door become the source of further mood-building after she has passed into the alternate world. The alternate versions of the characters—the “other” characters—include Coraline’s other mother and other father, the other Miss Spink and other Miss Forcible, and the other crazy old man upstairs. They add to the creepy feeling inspired by the story, largely through their physical characteristics. They are all paler and thinner than their real-world counterparts, with black buttons instead of eyes. Terry Pratchett notes that potency of that last image in particular, stating that, after reading Coraline, “you will never think about buttons in quite the same way again” (back cover).
The physical descriptions of these other characters are disturbing not only because of “nightmare images” (Pratt screen 3) such as those button eyes but because they symbolize the way the other characters twist the personalities of the real world characters. At one point, Coraline reflects that “These things… were illusions, things made by the other mother in a ghastly parody of the real people and real things at the other end of the corridor. She could not truly make anything, decided Coraline. She could only twist and copy and distort things that already existed” (117-118). For example, the other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible parody the former Shakespearean actresses by performing a gaudy vaudeville show for a theater full of dogs, butchering Shakespeare as they do so. At one point they open up their overweight bodies and out step two young women who are thin and pretty with black button eyes. Their prettiness and thinness itself becomes sinister because it stands in contrast to the “old and round” (1) women who were Coraline’s allies, warning her of the danger to come and giving her a special stone to protect her against it. Similarly, the other crazy old man upstairs is no eccentric but harmless immigrant, like the original crazy old man upstairs. His character description uses images which are olfactory or aural rather than visual to disturbing effect. His flat smells repulsive, “as if all the exotic foods in the world had been left out to go rotten” (117) and his voice is rustling and rough and reminds Coraline “of some kind of enormous dead insect” (118). Rather than friendly mice, the other crazy old man upstairs is surrounded by red-eyed rats who swarm up his sleeves and echo Coraline’s earlier dream by singing, “You’ll all get what you deserveses / When we rise from underneath” (117).
Perhaps the most important other character is the villain, the other mother. Her description is filled with a host of creepy details above and beyond those shared by all the other characters. Her fingers are long, tipped with sharp, curved red fingernails, and never stop moving. As the novel progresses, the other mother becomes physically less human. When she smiles she shows that her teeth are too long. Her hair begins to move, and in more than one case it is compared to some sort for frightening animal, “like the tentacles of a creature in the deep ocean” (62) and later “like lazy snakes” (89). These details, in addition to the other mother’s personal characteristics, lead one critic to describe her as “one of the most disturbing creatures I’ve encountered in fiction” (Pratt screen 2). She is also the first other character Coraline encounters after passing through the door. She is the first exposure to the other world and other characters for both Coraline and the readers, and the description of the other mother begins to build the novel’s sinister atmosphere in a way which is continued as further other characters are introduced.
Neither Gaiman’s character descriptions nor his foreshadowing would be as effective if it were not for his subtle tone. Critics nearly universally note the simple style of Coraline, which contributes to this tone. Yvonne Zipp of the Christian Science Monitor says of Gaiman, “his writing has the pared-down elegance of the best fairy tales” (screen 1). Another critic calls the novel’s prose “simple and lovely” (De Lint 31). Gaiman himself mentions that “writing for children, I will make every single word count… Coraline is 33,000 words long; I know what every one of those words does and why it’s there” (Interview). It is this simple elegance that enhances the suspenseful and eerie atmosphere of Coraline. Adele Geras states, “[Coraline is] written in a deadpan and unsensational way; the effect is supremely unsettling. There’s a real fear aroused by plain descriptions of unspeakable things…” (screen 1).
This prose style lends itself to understatement. For example, in the first other world scene, Coraline’s other father informs her that she can stay with them forever, but “there’s only one little thing we’ll have to do…” and the other mother echoes that it is “just a little thing” (45). This “one little thing” involves giving Coraline button eyes, and is clearly not so very little. Earlier, Misses Spink and Forcible’ls warning to Coraline is succinct and matter-of-fact, despite the great danger it portends. After Miss Spink tells Coraline that she is in terrible danger, Miss Forcible reprimands her, saying that she shouldn’t frighten the girl and her eyes are going. “Oh dear,” Miss Forcible says after demanding to see the cup, “You were right, April. She is in danger” (20). There is even some humor in the scene; after Miss Forcible confirms Coraline’s danger Miss Spink triumphantly declares, “See, Miriam… My eyes are as good as they ever were…” (20).
This sort of humor is repeated throughout Coraline, so quiet and subtle that it never quite dispels the tension felt by the readers. At one point, Coraline meets a mysterious talking black cat. She suggests that they could be friends, but the cat will have none of that: “‘We could be rare specimens of an exotic breed of African dancing elephants,” said the cat. ‘But we’re not. At least,’ it added cattily… ‘I’m not’” (37). This is simultaneously funny and worrisome, since it means that Coraline may not rely on the cat as an ally. IN a later scene, the other mother informs Coraline that “nobody sensible believes in ghosts anyway—that’s because they’re all such liars” (90). This, too, is both humorous and sinister; it is part of the other mother’s attempt to deceive Coraline, who has met a group of ghost children while trapped in a closet. The other mother wants the girl to disbelieve their advice and warning so that she can more easily trap her. These bits of humor exemplify the way Gaiman’s tone maintains a restrained yet truly creepy mood.
Also contributing to this mood is the way that Gaiman avoids the easy terror of bloody violence. Zipp notes that “the Brothers Grimm trafficked in more gore” (screen 2) and Geras remarks that the book “shows how unscary blood and guts are next to chilly, finely-wrought prose, a truly weird setting and a fable that taps into our most uncomfortable fears” (screen 1). Gaiman seems, even, to scrupulously sidestep outright violence, careful not to spoil the story’s finely-crafted creepiness with such base elements. The previously mentioned ghost children were not bloodily gobbled up or eaten. Their deaths were a slow and quiet slipping into darkness. One of the children describes this, saying, “She left us here… She stole our hearts, and she stole our souls, and she took our lives away, and she left us here, and she forgot about us in the dark” (84). The closest the novel comes to bloodiness, in fact, occurs the first time Coraline visits the other world. After telling her that they need only do one little thing to keep Coraline with them forever, her other parents lead her to the kitchen and show her “a spool of black cotton, and a long silver need, and, beside them, two large black buttons” (45). The image of the other mother sewing buttons over Coraline’s eyes is horrifying, and the readers are aided in imagining the horror of it when the other father assures Coraline that it won’t hurt, and she reflects that “when grown-ups told you something wouldn’t hurt it almost always did” (45). However, Coraline refuses, and the gory scene never happens. The other parents do not even say what they intend to do with the buttons, though Coraline and the readers guess it well enough. All violence is implied, a mere shadow of a dark and disturbing scene.
All of these elements—the simple prose, the understatement, the sly humor, the lack of blood and guts and gore—combine to form a subtlety of tone which enhances Coraline’s creepy flavor rather than detracting from it. It is “a good example of the ‘less is more’ principle” (Geras screen 1). Because of this, Coraline is more effective than many horror novels. It sacrifices the temporary shock of sensationalist writing and violent monster attacks for the subdued terror that slinks into readers’ subconscious and inspires nightmares long after the book is finished.