The novel Coraline epitomizes the hero’s quest as illustrated by Joseph Campbell in his seminal work. I chose to do this prompt because I had previously outlined the hero’s quest in the google doc as a way of better understanding the novel and how it relates to the class. However, please bear with me as there may be elements of archetypes included in this essay as they are important to understanding why Coraline behaves and reacts as she does.
Campbell lays out seventeen parts of the hero’s quest and all of the parts except one can easily be seen throughout the novel. While analyzing the parts of the hero’s quest I saw all of the parts with the exception of the meeting with the goddess. I will now explain each part of the hero’s quest as I have seen it in the novel. Coraline receives the call to adventure when she is not permitted to explore outside on a rainy day. This is quite frustrating for her because she sees herself as an explorer and likes to discover new things. So out of boredom she goes into the drawing room and finds a bricked up wall behind a door in the drawing room. Later that night a black shape enters the drawing room and she follows it, again showing her explorer archetype, and finds the door open a crack. Later she dreams of black shapes and there is foreshadowing that something bad will happen to Coraline because the shapes sing “…We will be here when you fall.” Coraline also receives another warning from her neighbors. The crazy old man tells her that the mice say that she should not go through the door, and the retired actresses see danger in her tea leaf readings. Miss Spink then gives her a stone with a hole in it which is a talisman that will be crucial in the grave events to come.
Refusal of the call is very evident in the novel because although Coraline crosses into the other world (by opening the drawing room door one day when she is bored and left home alone) and finds it to be a better reality than her own, she decides to return to her own world. She chooses to do so because the other mother wants to sew buttons into her eyes in order for her to stay there forever. Supernatural aid plays a key part in this novel because the black cat and the three ghost children serve as guides and mentors to Coraline so that she can defeat the other mother. The black cat warns her of danger and even helps her to get out of danger. For example when he and Coraline were on the outer edge of the other world he caught and killed a rat that was spying for the other mother. I found the use of a black cat as a mentor to be very interesting because many times black cats are portrayed as being sources of bad luck. In contrast in this novel the black cat serves as a mentor and lifesaver for Coraline.
The first threshold in Coraline is crossed when she must return to the other world to rescue her kidnapped parents from the other mother even though she is frightened. In this instance we see the orphan archetype strongly in Coraline. Not only is she a physical orphan (because her parents are missing) she also displays some of the positive characteristics of the orphan archetype namely resilience and being a survivor.
The Belly of the Whale is seen in this novel when after Coraline refuses to stay in the other world and be a good daughter she is locked behind the mirror as a punishment. However, some good comes from this because she meets the three ghost children who give her helpful suggestions as to how to outsmart the other mother. She vows to rescue them, and from this action and others we can clearly see the altruistic archetype in her. She is willing to put aside her fear and apprehension in order to rescue her parents and free the three ghost children so that they can pass on to the afterlife.
The Road of Trials is very crucial in this novel because it determines whether or not Coraline will be able to return to her world and be reunited with her parents. The black cat urges her to play games with the other mother and Coraline proposes a finding game to the other mother in which she would look for the souls of the three children and her parents. She uses the talisman from Miss Spink (the stone with the hole in it) as well as her wit and smarts to find the three souls and determine the whereabouts of her parents. I did not see the meeting with the goddess step manifested in this novel.
After taking your suggestion into consideration I reexamined the work and found that the woman as temptress element of the hero’s quest can be seen in the other mother. She puts several distractions before Coraline to lull her into a false sense of security, such as cooking delicious food, but Coraline does not fall for them and keeps her focus on the main goal. As with other tempters the other mother gets upset when her temptations do not work as Coraline shows her defiance.
I saw the Atonement with the father portion of the hero’s quest in the instance where the ghost children warned her that even if she won the game the other mother would not keep her word and let them go. This sets in motion the next set of events as Coraline devises a way to trick the other mother in order to return to the real world. The apotheosis element in the novel represents Coraline’s evolution from an orphan to a warrior who is willing to take on the other mother in order to rescue her parents and the ghost children and to return to her world. Although she does not become god-like, she is in essence powerful enough to outsmart and ultimately defeat the other mother.
The ultimate boon (the achievement of the goal or quest) is easily seen because Coraline finds the souls of the three children and deduces that her parents are trapped in the snow globe. The magic flight commences when, after tricking the mother into opening the door that connects the two worlds, she grabs the snow globe and throws the black cat at the other mother as she escapes to the real world with the key. During this flight we can also see the rescue from without element as she gets help from the three ghost children and two adults, who although they could not physically touch the door their hands held hers and gave her strength that she needed to be able to close the heavy door.
The crossing of the return threshold is illustrated when Coraline has a dream in which she meets the three children before they move on to the afterlife and they warn her that she must destroy the other mother’s severed hand because it wants to steal the key in order to open the door that connects the two worlds. She then sets up an elaborate plan and lures the hand into the well. The Master of Two worlds is only partially seen in this novel because Coraline is now happy in her own world but she cannot safely return to the other world and live comfortably in it. Finally she has the freedom to live because the hand can no longer harm her, and her parents are safe and sound with no knowledge of what has happened. She can now go back to her ordinary life. From this novel we definitely see that the grass was not in fact greener on the other side.
The hero’s quest helps us to understand this archetypal quest because we can see many of the archetypes manifested in Coraline as she undergoes this journey. If we were to just read the novel we might be a bit lost but as we analyze how the novel breaks down into the different parts of the hero’s quest it helps us to understand why Coraline acts and reacts the way she does. For example if we consider the Road of Trials phase of the quest we can see that it is important for Coraline to undergo these trials in order for her to achieve a transformation or metamorphosis. We see this transformation in her because she goes from a scared, innocent girl to a warrior as she searches for the souls, and she even outsmarts the other mother in order to get home.
We should care about the hero’s quest because it is all around us in many of the stories that we read and movies that we watch. Even the literature that we have considered throughout the term is overflowing with elements of the hero’s quest especially the movie Spirited Away. Overall I found the hero’s quest very helpful in breaking down the story of Coraline into simple parts which could then be put together later to identify themes, motifs and symbols in the work.
