Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Coraline, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age and Finding Oneself
Parents and Children
Home and the Familiar
Fear and Bravery
Summary
Analysis
Coraline wakes up feeling disoriented and displaced—it takes her a moment to remember who and where she is. She climbs out of bed and opens the closet to get dressed. The clothes in her other closet are all fancy costumes save for a dark pair of velvet jeans and a gray sweater with tiny twinkling stars sewn into the fabric. Coraline is hesitant to wear the clothes, but she puts them on anyway—and makes sure to transfer the stone with the hole in it from her robe pocket to the pocket of her new jeans.
Coraline goes into the kitchen to find it empty. She walks down the hall to her other father’s study and finds him sitting inert at the desk. Coraline asks where the other mother is, and the other father says she’s dealing with a “vermin problem.” When Coraline asks if there’s trouble with the rats, the other father says that the cat is the problem. Coraline notices that her other father’s face looks strange—it has grown “vague” and doughy. Coraline says she’s going to go exploring, but the other father tells her there’s no point in doing so—the house and the grounds are all the other mother “made” before resting and waiting for Coraline. Realizing he’s said too much, the other father tells Coraline he isn’t allowed to talk to her anymore.
Something about the other father is changing quickly—and this passage implies that the more he reveals to Coraline, the more he will deteriorate. This passage also suggests that the other mother has—or is seeking—complete control over this world and all the objects in it except for the cat.
Themes
Coraline wanders through the house. She tries the hall door, but it is locked, as she suspected it would be. She looks around the drawing room and is stunned to find that it is an exact replica of her own home’s drawing room except for one detail: a snow globe with two little people in it on the mantelpiece. Coraline shakes the snow globe once, then heads out the front door to explore the woods.
The snow globe represents a major clue as to her parents’ whereabouts—but Coraline doesn’t yet see how everything is adding up. She’s too distracted by her need to figure out the other mother’s world, her intentions, and her weaknesses—if she has any.
Themes
As Coraline wanders through the woods, the trees become more shapeless with each step—Coraline realizes that the other mother didn’t “bother” with this part of the world, since she assumed it would never be used. Coraline keeps walking until she finds herself in a mist—but the mist is not like regular fog, and instead feels like “walking into nothing.” Coraline keeps walking until there is nothing but whiteness all around her.
Coraline is beginning to understand that the other mother has created this entire world solely to entrap Coraline—and didn’t bother with any details she didn’t think Coraline would miss.
Themes
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The cat appears beside Coraline and tells her she’s wasting her time, as the other mother didn’t fill in this part of the world. Coraline again asks the cat what the other mother really is—again, the cat won’t answer her. Coraline and the cat keep walking along and soon arrive back at the front of the house. Coraline wonders aloud how one could possibly “walk away from something and still come back to it.” The cat explains they’ve walked all the way around the other mother’s tiny world—spiders’ webs, he says, need only be big enough to catch their prey.
The cat, in this passage, confirms that the other mother—whatever kind of creature she may be—has created the “world” of Coraline’s home as a kind of web meant to make Coraline comfortable and more easily entrapped. Coraline realizes that she is in grave danger—and that the other mother has been studying ways in which she might manipulate Coraline.
Themes
Coraline says the other father told her that the other mother is trying to keep the cat out—the cat laughs at the other mother’s attempts to try to keep him away, insisting that there are ways in and out of this world even the other mother doesn’t know of. Coraline asks more about the place they’re in, but the cat says only that the other mother has been here a long time. The cat pounces suddenly and lands on a large black rat—it explains that all the rats in this world are the other mother’s spies. The cat plays with the rat cruelly until Coraline tells it to stop. In response, the cat takes the rat in its mouth and walks off into the woods.
This passage suggests that while the other mother has been at work doing what she does for a long time, the cat has been alive—and perhaps, the narrative suggests, at work against her—for just as long. There are forces at work greater than Coraline realizes, and she must be very brave indeed in order to surmount them.
Themes
Coraline returns to the house and wanders to the hall mirror. She looks in it and sees only herself—but she soon feels the other mother’s hand on her shoulder. She is shocked to realize the other mother’s reflection does not register in the mirror. The other mother asks brightly if Coraline would like to play a game. Coraline says she doesn’t want to play with the other mother—she wants to find her parents and go home. The other mother insists she’ll break Coraline’s “proud” spirit with her love. Coraline says she’ll never love the other mother. The other mother asks Coraline to follow her so that they can negotiate.
The other mother doesn’t just want to possess or trap Coraline—she wants, or needs, Coraline’s love. Coraline, however, refuses to give it to her, knowing that there’s no way she could ever love someone so false, controlling, and cruel. Coraline is learning more about herself, about the love she’s been shown by her real parents, and about what she wants out of a parent-child relationship.
Themes
In the living room, the other mother sits on the sofa and takes out a paper bag. She extends it to Coraline—believing it’s candy, Coraline takes a peek, but instead discovers that the bag is full of beetles. Coraline refuses them, but the other mother begins munching happily on the beetles. The other mother asks if Coraline wants to enjoy a nice, quiet evening together eating delicious food and playing with the rats. Coraline is perturbed by the other mother’s long white fingers, which flutter endlessly as she talks. When Coraline refuses the other mother’s offer, the other mother pulls Coraline into the hallway, pulls a silver key from her pocket, and opens the hall mirror. She throws Coraline inside the dim closet behind it and tells her she can come out when she’s learned her manners.
The other mother is growing more and more grotesque as time goes by. She seems to be dropping her façade little by little—either out of laziness or out of an inability to control the decay of the illusions she created to lure Coraline in in the first place.
Themes
