Coraline, Neil Gaiman’s best-known book for children, spans many genres. At once a work of children’s literature, fantasy, and horror, Coraline is also a coming-of-age tale. As the young Coraline Jones traverses a twisted, terrifying realm which mirrors—and corrupts—her own world, her skills as a self-proclaimed “explorer” are put to the ultimate test. Throughout the book, Gaiman positions Coraline’s journey through the world of her “other mother”—an evil entity in disguise as Coraline’s mother which lives in a parallel realm connected to Coraline’s new house—as an allegory for the often-frightening process of coming into one’s own. Through Coraline’s experiences in this world, the novel ultimately suggesting that the endeavor to find one’s true self throughout the years of adolescence is, at times, a horror as dark as any nightmare.
The story of Coraline, dark but simple, lends itself easily to an allegorical interpretation of Coraline’s travails—and her skills as an explorer of unknown places and a finder of lost things—as a metaphor for the uncertainties and trials of adolescence. From the very beginning of the book, Gaiman positions Coraline as an intrepid explorer who spends the days before the start of the new school year roaming around in search of new things. She loves exploring her new house and its grounds, and even whines to her father that she wants to “carry on exploring” when stuck inside on a rainy day. Coraline is even the one to open the mysterious door in her family’s new flat that leads her to the other mother’s world—her insatiable curiosity about the world around her and her desire to understand her place in it are clear from the start.
Coraline’s skills as an explorer are about to come in handy in ways she never could have foreseen. Coraline has a desire to explore the world around her, which translates to a desire to understand herself, as well. Once Coraline visits the other mother’s world and sees what it has in store for her—twisted, strange versions of her own house, parents, and neighbors—she begins to feel apprehensive about staying and returns home. The other mother, incensed by Coraline’s betrayal, kidnaps her parents, forcing Coraline to return to the other world and conquer her fears of it. When confronted with a place that is difficult and unsettling to explore—the other mother’s world, or, in a more allegorical reading of the tale, the realm of adolescence—Coraline initially backs away. There’s something about this realm that repels her, and she wants to return to her own world and to the realm of innocence. Because Coraline is about to start a new school year, Gaiman positions her as being on the cusp of some big changes in her “real” life—changes related to growing older, maturing, and finding out who she really is. These changes frighten Coraline and she tries to retreat, but soon realizes she must confront them head-on.
Coraline’s companion in both her own world and the other mother’s world is a “haughty” black cat, knowledgeable but cryptic about the other mother’s origins and desires. The cat suggests Coraline win the freedom of herself, her parents, and the lost children the other mother has collected over the years by challenging the other mother to a game. Coraline then sets out to find the souls of the lost children (contained in the form of brightly-colored marbles scattered throughout the other mother’s world) and, as she does, must face a series of increasingly horrifying traps laid by the other mother herself. Coraline knows that in order to save herself, she must journey through uncomfortable and even frightening spaces. Gaiman suggests that Coraline’s journey through the other mother’s world and all its attendant horrors is similar to the journey all children must make through adolescence. Most of the terrors Coraline encounters, tellingly, involve the putrefaction, corruption, or alteration of a body or multiple bodies—from the black button eyes on all the creatures within the other mother’s world to the lost children’s transformation into wispy husks to the odious transformation of the other father, the other Miss Spink, and the other Miss Forcible into gelatinous, grublike creatures. The other mother’s world is full of body horror. This reflects the common association of adolescence as a time during which bodies are permanently in flux—as children grow older, they grow, their bodies change, and eruptions of hair and acne can strike at any moment. Coraline’s journey through the body horror of her other mother’s world reflects her own anxieties about the trials of adolescence, and the fear of never finding who she’s supposed to be amidst all the change and confusion.
Upon returning home, Coraline’s trials are not yet over—she still has to trap the other mother’s roving right hand, which was severed when Coraline slammed the door between her world and the other mother’s world on it and which seeks to possess the old black key to the door between the two worlds. However, once this task is completed, Gaiman shows Coraline at peace at last in her new home. As Coraline falls asleep on the night before the new school year begins, she’s full of peace and calm. She’s not worried about making new friends, struggling in her classes, or even dealing with the physical and emotional changes that lie in store for her as her adolescence begins. She has conquered the other mother’s world, found herself in the process, and now feels ready to conquer the challenges the real world presents—even challenges related to the painful process of coming of age.
Coraline’s journey through the other mother’s world contains many potent lessons, but it can also be viewed as an overarching allegory for the disorientation and discomfort of growing up. As Coraline’s particularly frightening reckoning with the demands of adulthood unfolds, Gaiman shows his young readers that their fears, apprehensions, and uncertainties about growing up are normal. Ultimately, Gaiman’s suggestion that the process of finding oneself in the years of one’s adolescence is difficult—and, at times, even frightening—is an empathetic and optimistic one. Though coming of age presents challenges and difficulties, they can be conquered through bravery, compassion, and determination.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Coming of Age and Finding Oneself ThemeTracker
Coming of Age and Finding Oneself Quotes in Coraline
[Coraline] dreamed of black shapes that slid from place to place, avoiding the light, until they were all gathered together under the moon. Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth.
They started to sing,
We are small but we are many
We are many we are small
We were here before you rose
We will be here when you fall.
The mist hung like blindness around the house. She walked slowly to the stairs up to her family’s flat, and then stopped and looked around.
In the mist, it was a ghost-world. In danger? thought Coraline to herself. It sounded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing. Not really.
Coraline went back upstairs, her fist closed tightly around her new stone.
The three of them walked back up to Coraline’s other house together. Coraline’s other mother stroked Coraline’s hair with her long white fingers. Coraline shook her head.
“Don’t do that,” said Coraline.
Her other mother took her hand away.
“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.”
“And he said that wasn’t brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung,” said Coraline to the cat. “It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave.”
Coraline was woken by the midmorning sun, full on her face.
For a moment she felt utterly dislocated. She did not know where she was; she was not entirely sure who she was.
“If you won’t even talk to me,” said Coraline, “I am going exploring.”
“No point,” said the other father. “There isn’t anywhere but here. This is all she made: the house, the grounds, and the people in the house. She made it and she waited.” Then he looked embarrassed and he put one finger to his lips again, as if he had just said too much.
And then [Coraline’s] hand touched something that felt for all the world like somebody’s cheek and lips, small and cold; and a voice whispered in her ear, “Hush! And shush! Say nothing, for the beldam might be listening!”
Coraline said nothing.
She felt a cold hand touch her face, fingers running over it like the gentle beat of a moth’s wings.
Another voice, hesitant and so faint Coraline wondered if she were imagining it, said, “Art thou—art thou alive?”
“Yes,” whispered Coraline.
“Poor child,” said the first voice.
“I think I like this game. But what kind of game shall it be? A riddle game? A test of knowledge or of skill?”
“An exploring game,” suggested Coraline. “A finding-things game.”
“And what is it you think you should be finding in this hide-and-go-seek game, Coraline Jones?”
Coraline hesitated. Then, “My parents,” said Coraline. “And the souls of the children behind the mirror.”
Coraline sighed. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said. “I don’t want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted? Just like that, and it didn’t mean anything. What then?”
“I don’t understand,” said the whispery voice.
“Of course you don’t understand,” she said, raising the stone with the hole in it to her eye. “You’re just a bad copy she made of the crazy old man upstairs.”
“Not even that anymore,” said the dead, whispery voice.
“Help me, please,” she said. “All of you.”
The other people in the corridor—three children, two adults—were somehow too insubstantial to touch the door. But their hands closed about hers, as she pulled on the big iron door handle, and suddenly she felt strong.
“Never let up, Miss! Hold strong! Hold strong!” whispered a voice in her mind.
“Pull, girl, pull!” whispered another.
And then a voice that sounded like her mother’s—her own mother, her real, wonderful, maddening, infuriating, glorious mother—just said, “Well done, Coraline,” and that was enough.
Normally, on the night before the first day of term, Coraline was apprehensive and nervous. But, she realized, there was nothing left about school that could scare her anymore.
