NOTE: I'll be handing out the short Paper #2 assignment on Tuesday which will be due in just shy of two weeks (see calendar two posts down). So don't miss out!
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: We discussed some of the thematic connections between The Hobbit and Coraline in class on Thursday, so let’s go a step further: how is the Other Mother like Smaug? Or, how could Smaug be a ‘theory’ for reading the Other Mother? Do you think Gaiman might have had this famous dragon in mind when creating her? (does he drop any little clues…?)
Q2: Though the Other Mother is obviously a monster of some sort, her words have a curious ring to them. Phrases like, “the proudest spirit can be broken, with love” and “Manners makyth man,” for example, sound like they come from a Victorian conduct manual. What do you make of these phrases, and why does Gaiman make her talk like this? What idea or parody of motherhood might she represent?
Q3: When Coraline finds the “Other Father” in the basement, he’s a deformed and misshapen lump of dough. Coraline takes pity on him, reflecting, “Poor thing…You’re just a thing she made and then threw away” (109). We also learn that she can’t create anything, but can only “twist and copy and distort things that already existed” (116). Why might this be a child’s introduction to the concept of evil? Why might ‘evil’ work in exactly the same way?
Q4: I suggested in class on Thursday that Coraline is a children’s book for adults, meaning that it’s a book children are meant to grow into. With that in mind, how might Coraline stumble across a few ‘theories’ which have more resonance to an adult than to a child? In other words, where might the book become a symbolic lesson for how to survive in adulthood?
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