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 begins crying but quickly stops herself, knowing she needs to figure out where she is. She begins feeling her way around the tiny dark room and, soon, her hands pass over a small, warm face. Coraline is about to scream, but a voice whispers in her ear and tells her to be quiet—“the beldam might be listening.” Another voice asks if Coraline is alive, and Coraline says she is. Coraline asks who the voices belong to—a third voice says that the three of them have been imprisoned so long they no longer remember their names.
As Coraline encounters three other children who have similarly been trapped by the other mother, she realizes that she might not make it out of the other mother’s world entirely alive. The children refer to the other mother as “the beldam”—an antiquated word for a witch or an evil old woman. Coraline is learning more and more about the other mother’s true nature.
Themes
Coraline’s eyes adjust to the dark. She is able to see three shapes before her—children just about the same size as Coraline herself. Coraline reaches out for the hand of the voice who just lamented forgetting its name and squeezes it. She asks the child if it’s a boy or a girl—the child says it isn’t sure but believes itself to be a boy. Coraline asks how the three children ended up here—one of them says that “she” stole their hearts and souls and imprisoned them in the dark. The three children all have similar stories of finding their other mother waiting for them on the other side of a door in their house. One of the voices urges Coraline to flee, but she says she can’t until she’s rescued her parents.
As Coraline talks with the lonely lost children, she learns even more about how the other mother lures her prey. Coraline now understands that all of these children have, throughout history, been tempted into the other mother’s clutches when she appeared to them disguised as other versions of their mothers. This seems to imply that the other mother feeds on the hearts and souls of young children—and that the ones who love her nourish her the most.
Themes
One of the voices, speaking in a strange, antiquated tongue, suggests that if Coraline is planning on winning her parents back from “the beldam,” she could also win back the lost children’s souls—the other mother has hidden them throughout her little world. Coraline asks what will happen to her if she fails, and one of the voices says the other mother will turn Coraline into a “husk.” Another voice urges Coraline, again, to simply flee, but Coraline insists running away won’t work.
Coraline realizes that while she can’t run away, she can’t stay too long, either—or risk withering away into nothingness like the poor, forgotten lost children who have been trapped in the dark for years or even centuries.
Themes
Coraline offers to bring the children with her when the other mother lets her out of the mirror-room, but the others reply that they’d shrivel in the light without their souls. Coraline closes her eyes, feeling defeated. As she falls asleep, she hears one of the children whisper to her: “Look through the stone.”
The lost children know that Coraline is, perhaps, their last hope, and they give her a piece of advice that will aid her in finding their souls—and, in the process, finding herself too.
Themes
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