Return home is the last part of the quest-story pattern and the final stage Coraline has to get through during her self-discovery journey. Aside from being that final stage, the return home also means that imagination ends and reality begins. During Coraline’s homecoming process, she’s both tempted and challenged by evil forces.
Now she has to face the consequences resulted from her curiosity and mischief, and pluck up her courage to fight against them.
This chapter explores the grotesque elements (fantasy elements) and suffering (folkloric motif), rites of passage (theory of socialization) that are related to the last part of the quest-story pattern. This chapter also focuses primarily on the situations and psychological factors Coraline has to face when she returns home from her adventures, and traces her psychological transition and moral development provoked by the uncanny effect and the grotesque elements. The questions are addressed in this chapter are: (1) what are the grotesque elements, and what kind of psychological influences do they produce in the narratives of Coraline? (3) When linked to other fantasy elements and folkloric motifs employed in Coraline, what kind of psychological and disturbing effects do the uncanny effect and the grotesque elements bring to both the protagonist and the reader? (4) What is Gaiman’s attempt to make Coraline suffer during her adventures? (5) What are rites of passage, and what kind of significant meanings do they have? (6) Why does the representation of Coraline’s coming-of-age process in the story correspond to rites of passage?
The Grotesque Elements
The grotesque, a style of storytelling and narrative feature, usually excites fear as well as revulsion in the protagonist and the reader. As the term suggests, the grotesque carries a negative connotation of absurdity frequently combined with the supernatural.
However, the genre often offers much more, as it can also feature bizarre, comic, and abnormal elements, in addition to arousing empathic pity. Although the various elements seem incompatible, a grotesque narrative is capable of combining various meanings into a heterogeneous mixture that conveys meanings at the same time.
Coraline indicates the popularity of the literary genre of the grotesque in children’s
literature, whose setting merges the natural world with a fantasy world, containing grotesqueries in abundance, and revolving around mythical beings and supernatural forces that capture the spirit of the grotesque.
Deviating from the grottos found in the 15th Roman excavations, the word
“grotesque” has come to be used as a term to denote a literary genre associated with Gothic elements such as supernaturality, horror, death, and the supernatural. The grotesqueries can be found in Coraline in which the supposed normality of a young girl’s childhood is shown to be absurd and distorted. As Wolfgang Kayser writes in The Grotesque in Art and Literature, “the essential ingredients of the grotesque are
the mixture of heterogeneous elements, the confusion, the fantastic quality, an alienation of the world, the insecurity, and the terror inspired by the disintegration of the world” (51-2). As a satiric dystopian children’s fantasy story, Coraline has been discussed in terms of its Gothic setting, grotesque elements and uncanny motif blended into a mixture of heterogeneous meanings in the narratives that have strong disturbing effects on the protagonist and the reader. The employment of the grotesque elements in the story is used as a tool to propel the plot and induce the main intention
of story which is teaching moral lessons to children. To create the Gothic imagery and the idea of the grotesque in the realm of fantasy, the story employs grotesque elements such mythical creatures and ghosts, and the combination of disparate elements such as comic, absurdity, horror, and repulsiveness.
The grotesque, like the uncanny effect, also involves psychological evocation on both the protagonist and the reader but to an inexplicable and extreme manner.
According to Kayser, “[t]he grotesque is the estranged world in which suddenness and surprise are essential elements of it” (184). As discussed in the previous chapter, Freud indicates that “the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (195). As a feeling of confusion and disorientation, of not knowing how to react to a world that was once familiar but is now strange and threatening, the uncanny effect is deftly constructed in the story when Coraline travels to the fantasy world. The uncanny, according to Freud, “is undoubtedly related to what is frightening—to what arouses dread and horror; equally certainly, too, the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with what excites fear in general” (193). The uncanny effect, as a matter of fact, corresponds to what Fred Botting states in his Gothic, that a gothic story
“produces emotional effects on its readers rather than developing a rational or properly cultivated response” (4). The uncanny is the feeling one never quite knows what to do with it until he/she has identified it. Coraline never quite knows what to do with the feelings provoked by the uncanny effect until she has identified that they come from the Gothic setting (the other world) and grotesque characters (the other people) of the other world.
Compared with the uncanny effect, the grotesque captures a wider spectrum of feelings and emotions such as disgust, empathy, horror and absurdity, just to name a few. The story of Coraline concentrates so much on the materials of the fantasy world
(the Gothic setting and grotesque characters) that it has that tendency of drawing both the protagonist and the reader into the mystery of fantasy world. Also, one thing that has to be noticed is that the uncanny and grotesque allusions appearing throughout the story depend on both Coraline and the reader being able to interpret and make sense of such narrative elements in Coraline’s psychological development.
In The Grotesque in English Literature, Arthur Clayborough writes, “The word grotesque, with its artistic connotation of ‘unnatural’, would seem to be by definition inapplicable to natural phenomena” (8). This means that the grotesque elements employed in Coraline to dramatize Coraline’s fear of evil powers meet the distorted nature of a dystopian children’s story, in which the grotesque is in evidence and furnishes the structural basis of the whole story. One of the grotesque elements in Coraline that may appeal to children is the disgustful nature of the other parents.
When they reveal their true selves, they look disgusting. The mythical creatures in the other world are a group of villains, and the mastermind behind the scheme is the other mother, a spider-like creature who disguises herself as a mirrored representation of Corlaine’s real mother, luring children away from home to replace their eyes with buttons, devour them, and imprison their souls.
The other mother’s creepiness and skeleton-like shape as well as sharp nails clutches show a combination of both the uncanny and the grotesque. What adds to the grotesquery and creepiness to the other mother is that, on one occasion, she invites Coraline to have some chocolates which actually are live beetles:
The other mother sat down on the big sofa. She picked up a shopping bag from beside the sofa and took out a white, rustling, paper bag from inside it.
She extended the hand with it to Coraline. “Would you like one?” she asked politely. Expecting it to be a toffee or a butterscotch ball, Coraline looked down. The bag was half filled with large shiny blackbeetles, crawling over each other in their efforts to get out of the bag. (Coraline 78)
The other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible also reveal their demonic and horrific true selves after they regress to plasticine-like thing in a spider’s sac:
It twitched in the light beam. Inside the sac was something that looked like a person, but a person with two heads, with twice as many arms and legs as it should have. The creature in the sac seemed horribly unformed and unfinished, as if two plastcine people had been warmed and rolled together, squashed and pressed into one thing. (Coraline 101)
When reading the description of the emergence of a body that is so monster-like, a moment readers would think the whole body would be most on view, or most pertinent to describe what they read is almost a distortion of both their sense and perception. Two things about the two passages cited above are worth discussing here.
Firstly, the main characteristic of these narratives is the conflation of grotesque elements and the interweaving of human and insect into a disgusting and horrific form of grotesqueness. Breaking the laws of nature is part of the nature of the grotesque.
The sense of the other mother’s spider-like body and the other Miss Spink and the other Miss Forcible’s sac as grotesque goes beyond just showing a sense of ugliness.
Secondly, there’s a general absurdity of grotesqueness in the story in which the other mother, the other Miss Spink, and the other Miss Forcible deliver a repulsive and distorted image of the human body with a grotesque nature. The grotesque elements
are accentuated here by delivering a mixed sensation of fear and disgust.
Children’s portal-quest fantasies encounters are often of a mythic nature associated with supernaturality and grotesqueness. The story of Coraline is situated in a contemporary mundane environment, yet it gives young readers a glimpse of the bizarre and mystic world beyond the ordinary and boring world children usually perceive. The other world and the other characters, in a sense, are the distorted and grotesque reflection of the real world and real people. Driven by longing and curiosity, Coraline determines to explore the world behind the small door, but only to find that people and things are not exactly what they look like. Her adventures turn out to be grotesque when the other loving mother turns out to be a spider-like monster that traps children into her net in the other world. When Coraline talks to the other father, she realizes how horrific his face becomes:
He looked less like her true father today. There was something slightly vague about his face—like bread dough that had begun to rise, smoothing out the bumps and cracks and depressions. (Coraline 70)
It depends on the reader’s interpretation and reception to decide what kind of effects such a passage would provoke. Moreover, what makes the quality of the grotesque peculiar is that there is no clear determination can be made as to whether the meaning of the passage is satiric, comic or frightening. It opens up possibilities for interpretation by introducing the grotesque elements into the story. Furthermore, the grotesque narrative tends not to show the whole picture at a time; rather, it depends on the attitude and interpretation of the readers, whether the ideas and images connected with their conscious or unconscious mind. Most importantly, the grotesque narrative involves a great deal of emotional depiction and suffering.
Compared to the other mother who actually is a spider, the other father is a grub that wriggles like a worm. The following scene offers an example that provokes feelings of revulsion and horror:
In that dim light, it took her several seconds to recognize it for what it was: the thing was pale and swollen like a grub, with thin, sticklike arms and feet. I had almost no features on its face, which had puffed and swollen like risen bread dough. The thing had two large black buttons where its eyes should have been. […] The thing turned its head until both its black button eyes were pointed straight at her. A mouth opened in the mouthless face, strands of pale stuff sticking to the lips, and a voice that no longer even faintly resembled her father’s whispered, “Coraline.” […]The creature’s twiglike hands moved to its face and pushed the pale clay about, making something like a nose.
(Coraline 110-1)
The transformation of the other father is not only treated as a magical event but also a grotesque combination of disgust and horror. Unlike the transformation of inanimate toys into animate objects, this is of the animate into the animate yet of different forms.
The fantastic alteration of the human and animal “forms” contributes to the blending of the comic and the horrific that draws forth some characteristics of the grotesque that are prevalent among traditional storytelling of fairy tale. In the grotesque storytelling, however, it’s not just the degree of distortion or exaggeration that determines whether readers find the narrative funny or absurd. As Aristotle argues in Poetics, “comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type—the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness
which is not painful or destructive” (59). Therefore, the imitation of the other father’s gullible and ignoble behavior in storytelling, in a sense, draws forth comic and absurd feelings in readers as they read.
It can be suggested that elements of Coraline’s real world become transformed, magnified and projected into the uncanny and grotesque elements that hinder her from reaching her goals during her portal-quest. Through the conveyance of languages, readers are able to visit the uncharted area between the light and dark sides of the human psyche. Coats suggests that, like “The New Mother,” Coraline is “a spooky, cautionary tale that works by playing on very real childhood fears” (The Gothic 86).
Both stories have a frightening image of phallic incarnation which is both uncanny and grotesque. As Silver points out that “the new mother’s tail, so long that it
‘dragged along the ground outside’ is clearly a phallic symbol” (732). Likewise, the other mother also has phallic attributes described in the narrative of the story: “[T]he other mother was huge—her head almost brushed the ceiling—and very pale, the color of a spider’s belly. Her hair writhed and twined about her head, and her teeth were sharp as knives” (Coraline 128). In this metaphoric presentation of a phallic imagery, the witch’s giant head symbolizes a phallus, and her writhed and twined hair symbolizes the public hair that grows around the phallus. Ironically, the witch’s phallic imagery doesn’t render any sense of phallic envy but fear and disgust of her evil powers in Coraline.
It can be interpreted that the monstrous materialization of the other mother is summoned by Coraline herself, projecting through the subconscious of her mind and bringing suffering and turmoil to herself. The phallic imagery in Coraline contrasts the other mother’s thirst for power to control over Coraline and the ghost children with the other father’s inferiority of his little power and subordinate position. The following narrative manifests the other father’s inferiority. When searching for the
three marbles that shelter the ghost children’s souls, Coraline encounters the other father:
“Poor thing,” she said. “I bet she made you come down here as a punishment for telling me too much.” […] “Poor thing,” she said. You’re just thing she made and then threw away.” The thing nodded vigorously.
[…] “Run, child. Leave this place. She wants me to hurt you, to keep you here forever, so that you can never finish the game and she will win. She is pushing me so hard to hurt you. I cannot fight her.” (Coraline 111-2)
This scene illustrates the other mother’s phallic imagery by showing the cruel thing she does to the other father, her sidekick. More importantly, it indicates that suffering is inevitable, and Coraline must suffer through her way toward her psychological and moral growth that involve with psychological interaction with the grotesque elements.
Coraline’s Sufferings as Trials
The portal-quest theme is often depicted in a metaphoric way in children’s stories when there are power struggles between children and adults, and the protagonist has to go through suffering or turmoil to gain maturity. When writing portal-quest fantasy stories, many writers base on the ideas that the children who are disobedient require “treatment”―suffering or difficult task to fulfill as their
punishment or mission. Once they finish their mission they can return to their family as ordinary children again. Their mission, however, is never easy, for child protagonists are always confronted with difficult challenges of becoming adults.
Change is one of the challenges that signify the acceptance to give up the old self and embrace the new self, and the growing up experiences are usually accentuated with difficult and painful processes through which protagonists have to go in children’s portal-quest fantasy stories.
Coraline’s adventurous portal-quest is grotesque and associated with sufferings.
It may seem cruel to lead a child such as Coraline into darkness alone, but the story leaves the light on by introducing her to a black cat, neighbors and ghost children for assistance, making the process of her finding ways out more appealing and plausible to readers. The fictional world in Coraline is never a utopia for there are a lot of challenges, sufferings and battles waiting for Coraline to undergo; moreover, the villains always seek chances to consume children and imprison their souls. One of the features of the story that is both uncanny and grotesque is that the other mother’s doubling the real mother which symbolizes the repressed desire to castrate her child by taking out her eyes. The other parents and neighbors in the fantasy world act not only as doubles but also as foils to the parents and neighbors in the real world. After making Coraline feels like at home in the other world, the other parents want to replace her eyes with buttons so she can be like them and stay with them forever:
“So,” said her other father. “Do you like it here?”
“I suppose,” said Coraline. “It’s much more interesting than at home.”...
“I’m glad you like it,” said Coraline’s mother. “Because we’d like to think that this is your home. You can stay here for ever and always. […]
”If you want to stay,” said her other father, “there’s only one little thing we’ll have to do, so you can stay here for ever and always.”
They went into the kitchen. On a china plate on the kitchen table was a spool of black cotton, and a long silver needle, and, beside them, two large black buttons.
“I don’t think so,” said Coraline.
“Oh, but we want you to,” said her other mother. “We want you to stay. And it’s just a little thing.”
“It won’t hurt,” said her other father. (Coraline 45)
The other mother wants to take Coraline’s life and imprison her soul. The first move she has to take is to replace Coraline’s eyes with buttons. Gaiman is not original by thinking and creating this gruesome plot out of his wealth of imagination. Rather, he
The other mother wants to take Coraline’s life and imprison her soul. The first move she has to take is to replace Coraline’s eyes with buttons. Gaiman is not original by thinking and creating this gruesome plot out of his wealth of imagination. Rather, he