An Other Alice?: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline

HUM 2250: Film AdaptationSummer 2011Dr. PerdigaoJune 2, 2011

Windows and Doors• Neil Gaiman (b. 1960)• Born and raised in England, now lives in Minnesota• Coraline (2002): NY Times bestseller, won the Hugo and the Nebula (for

science fiction and fantasy)• http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/Books/

• The Graveyard Book (2008) [Nobody Owens]• Anansi Boys (2005)• American Gods (2001)• Neverwhere (1996) [girl named Door from London Below]• Good Omens (1990), with Terry Pratchett

• Sandman comics, graphic novels (began in 1989); Sandman: Endless Nights (2003), NY Times bestseller list [The Endless: Dream; Desire, Despair; Destiny; Delirium; Destruction; Death; Sandman as Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, Master of Story]

• Stardust (1999), unillustrated version

• The Wolves in the Walls (2003), children’s book

Reflections• Alice as “monster” to the lion and the unicorn

• “‘I always thought they were fabulous monsters!’ said the Unicorn. ‘Is it alive?’” (175).

• Alice becomes other, not quite a little girl

• Ideas about what is fantasy and what is reality in this world

• “she was already getting quite used to being called ‘The Monster’” (177).

• “‘what is the use of a child without any meaning?’” (193).

• “‘So I wasn’t dreaming, after all . . . unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream’” (179).

• “‘I want to be a Queen’” (181).

• The White Knight’s inventions

Making Meanings• Alice coming “full circle” as opposites meet (note on 198): front and back

doors; two ends of the chess board; beginning and end

• As resolution

• Question remains “Which Dreamed It?”

• Left to the reader

Mirror Masks?• “She explored the garden” (4), which contains “flyblown rosebushes” (5)

• The mice get Coraline’s name right while the old man thinks it is wrong (16), to Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (20)

• Trying to draw the mist (17)

• The mist as a “ghost-world” (21)—exciting or danger?

• Everybody vs. nobody with back to school shopping (23)

• Enters the looking-glass world (27); looking-glass message when parents disappear (53)

• Sounds like her mother. Only . . . Only . . . (27)

Cheshire Catting?• Cat as liminal figure, border-crosser

• Idea of names (36-7)

• Idea of cats talking (38)

• Key and the door

• Cat’s ideas about the other mother, as creature “her kind of thing” (65)

• Mirrors “never to be trusted” (77)

Other Alice• Coraline not sure “where she was” and “who she was” (67)

• Idea of an other Coraline (69)

• World the other mother creates

• Her creation and imagination but manipulation

• “pale nothingness, like a blank sheet of paper” (73)

Ghost World• “‘The names are the first things to go . . . We keep our memories longer than

our names’” (83).

• “empty places” (87)

• Other mother located nowhere and anywhere (95)

• World turns into “formless, swirling mist” (105), becomes “idea of a house” (105)

• De-creation?

• Can only “twist and copy,” not create (118, 124)

• Coraline, as a contrast, as “explorer”

• Other father’s devolved role (111), part of the “dust and damp and forgetting” (111)

Masterplotting• Coraline redefined: wise, brave, tricky

• Wished luck, good fortune, widsom, courage (145)

• Given time to plot and plan and ponder (152)

• Teatime again?

Nothing but a pack of cards?• Coraline’s realization about a perfected world (120)

• She is changing, house is changing (120)

• From photograph to crude drawing (124)

• “unraveling time” (128)

• Mother changes—real, wonderful, maddening, infuriating, glorious mother (134)—or perspective?