Gaiman creates Coraline through the lens of folkloric motifs, fairy tales, myths and legends, whose eponymous heroine sets out on a quest to find better parents only to discover at the end that she prefers her real parents better, turning down the offer of staying with the other parents in the fantasy world forever and fight against them to save everybody out. At the beginning of the story, Coraline’s home is a space controlled by her neglected parents who spend a lot of time burying themselves in work at home. Feeling neglected, Coraline then decides to investigate the little door bricked up in the wall and only to finds that it’s actually a portal that leads to a fantasy world, a dystopian representation of a world of wonder created by the other mother, in which both truths and rules of the Coraline’s world are reversed to meet her needs. However, that world is not a safe place as it appears to be and she confronts the dangers that she and her parents might lose their lives to the spider-like monster who disguises herself as her other mother.
There are many fantasy elements, folkloric motifs and literary archetypes employed in Coraline, but portal-quest is the major motif that serves as a thread to hold the story together, providing the reader with examples of a child who discovers her psychological and moral strength, wit and courage, and successfully overcomes temptations and adversities at the end of her journeys. The process of Coraline’s psychological and moral maturation is central to its plot. Child readers who identify Coraline can understand the struggles and sufferings Coraline faces during her journey and acquire insight to overcome their own struggles in life. As Campbell states in Power of Myth, that “the ultimate aim of hero’s quest must neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and power to serve others” (XIV). From this point
of view, the story appears to have functioned as a warning tale, giving moral lessons to both the protagonist and the reader by showing them the dangers of encountering strangers with evil intent, and the importance of relying on their own strength and intelligence to survive and save others.
The growth theme is at the heart of Coraline and surfaces throughout the story through the portraying of Coraline’s psychological and moral transformations. This story teaches readers that at some point in life everyone will encounter the other mother (the beldam), and it depends on one’s moral judgment and psychological strength to help himself/herself fight and overcome fears and temptations from the dark powers. Coraline’s portal-quest in a sense not only strengthens her psychological and moral growth but also helps her advance to another stage of life. The moral lessons certainly play very important roles in Coraline for teaching both the protagonist and the reader right from wrong and cause and effect. The author of the study sees moral lessons given in different guises throughout the story: be they parents as Coraline’s real parents, parental lessons; be they supernatural evildoers as Coraline’s other parents and other neighbors, evil temptations; be they ghost children as Coraline’s helpers, those unfortunate children abducted, killed and forgotten by the other mother long time ago, their warnings about the other mother’s evil deeds; and the black cat as a wise man, his wit helps Coraline get away from the evil beldam’s clutches; and then finally the representation of coming of age is interweaved with all those guises. It makes clear that the moral lessons center on Coraline’s moral and psychological developments ultimately lead to her growth, and they are the answers that unfold during her many encounters with evildoers, sufferings and hardships.
Coraline is a rite-of-passage story about a girl’s psychological and moral formation. Although the story doesn’t touch on a broader range of issues to portray a fuller development of Coraline’s growth over a longer period of time (e.g., from
childhood to adulthood), it does manage to illustrate some salient features of Coraline’s psychological and moral growth over the course of her journeys. Coraline, who is an impulsive and thoughtless child at the beginning, by the end of the story has become a thoughtful one. The story offers certain positive points such as the importance of telling right from wrong, the virtue to help others who are in need, and the determination to overcome obstacles. When she’s indulged by the other parents in the dystopia, she is not lost. She is able to see through their malicious intentions and make right choices. She travels to a magical world through a portal, encounters mystical beings and supernatural forces, helps people there fight against the evil powers and returns home empathic, braver and wiser. These traits represent Coraline’s psychological and moral changes.
It is widely accepted that reading fantasy stories is the kind of activity that not only expands children’s imaginations but also broadens their horizons, for it allows children to experience wonders through distance, helping them open to all the wonderful possibilities in life. Reading fantasy becomes a way to help children make meaning about their lives and environments, for they can imagine and experience vicariously through those characters’ eyes and actions in the story. It is said that young children can easily identify with characters of their own age and relate to the idea of adventures in the fantasy world. Coraline enables them to explore their inner feelings of fear, anxiety, and yearning for love and caring, leading to a better understanding of themselves and others. The more types of fantasy stories children are exposed to, the greater their understanding about life in both real and literary worlds will be.
Children’s fantasy stories have the capacity to help child readers across barriers of culture, age, gender, and even language, embodying the universal pleasure of escape, and enabling readers to experience the ups and downs of the fantastic adventures woven magically into stories.
In conclusion, it would be most unfortunate if readers contemplate children’s fantasy stories only as teaching materials for children—that is to say, the aim of children’s fantasy stories should be to entertain children with fascinating materials.
Addressing children and young adults specifically, children’s fantasy as a literary mode meets child readers’ imagination on a familiar but paradoxical ground. The familiar ground is that children’s portal-quest fantasy writers invent the worlds in ways similar to the worlds invented by children themselves: they invent places, people, names and other things they learn from reality with references to myths, legends or fairytales. The paradoxical ground is that the writers’ creations always contain their voices hidden in the text, guiding children to make correct decisions. As for the didactic purpose, it’s supposed to be woven into the stories not as obvious as possible. Coraline’s portal-quest, as it’s manifested throughout the story, is the vehicle for her psychological and moral lessons that bring rich meanings to herself and the reader alike. The importance of the representation of Coraline’s coming of age is that, through her portal-quest, it offers examples of her psychological and moral developments from which the reader can learn.