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The Other Miss Miriam Forcible
This is an eccentric old man who lives upstairs from Coraline and her family. The crazy old man refers to Coraline as “Caroline,” even when she corrects him—he is too busy preparing his mouse circus for a big performance to pay Coraline much attention. Though Coraline dismisses the old man as “crazy,” the story implies that his mice are actually capable of talking and performing music: they warn the old man that Coraline is in danger, and, at the end of the novel, can be heard performing delightful, tinkling music. The crazy old man upstairs teaches Coraline about the necessities of building a home—she learns that she must form relationships with her neighbors, even the “crazy” ones, and that sometimes, people are more delightful than one initially thinks.
The Crazy Old Man Upstairs/Mr. Bobo Quotes in Coraline
The Coraline quotes below are all either spoken by The Crazy Old Man Upstairs/Mr. Bobo or refer to The Crazy Old Man Upstairs/Mr. Bobo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 13 Quotes
[Coraline] fancied she could hear sweet music on the night air: the kind of music that can only be played on the tiniest silver trombones and trumpets and bassoons, on piccolos and tubas so delicate and small that their keys could only be pressed by the tiny pink fingers of white mice.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Crazy Old Man Upstairs/Mr. Bobo Character Timeline in Coraline
The timeline below shows where the character The Crazy Old Man Upstairs/Mr. Bobo appears in Coraline. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...aging former actresses who own a large number of Highland terriers. Above Coraline lives a crazy old man with a mustache who has told Coraline that he is in the process of training...
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Chapter 2
...Coraline finds herself walking in circles—she soon arrives back at the house, where she encounters the crazy old man from upstairs . He tells her that his mice don’t enjoy the fog—but they do have a...
(full context)
Chapter 13
...has a long scratch on his side. As Coraline leaves Miss Spink and Miss Forcible’s, the crazy old man upstairs calls out to Coraline and says hello. She asks him how his mice are, and...
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...how their dog is doing, and they say that after a vet visit, he’s fine. Mister Bobo , they say, thinks the dog might’ve had a tussle with a weasel. Coraline asks...
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Coraline returns to the house— Mister Bobo is standing outside. He tells Coraline that the mice have told him Coraline has saved...
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