Neil Gaiman has received multiple awards and honours commemorating him on his novel Coraline with such awards like the Hugo Award of Best Novella, Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers, and is a Blue Ribbon winner. Author Phillip Pullman acclaimed that “[t]his is a marvelously strange and scary book” and Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events stated, “[t]his book tells a fascinating and disturbing story that frightened me nearly to death.” The eerie and dark composition Gaiman is very famous for portraying is perfectly demonstrated in the other world in Coraline. Coraline, a young, bored, and ignored girl explores the wonders of her house, moving from the parental house to the “negative mirror image in the house of the other parents” (Wilkie-Stibbs). In this other world Coraline endures scary and out of the ordinary scenarios. Gaiman effortlessly displays how something that seems and feels familiar can produce so much uncertainty. Even though this alternate world is just on the other side of the wall, no one really knows where it is. In the other world, Gaiman allows Coraline to experience mysterious and frightening scenarios where he reveals that in such a world many unexpected things occur that leaves the readers to be unsure of what is going to happen next.
Coraline Jones is a little girl who moves into an apartment flat (previously a house) with her parents where her neighbours are not so ordinary. Even though she living in an old house with these odd neighbours, Coraline still finds herself bored and unentertained. Her parents are hard working and they mostly “[do] things on computers, which meant that they were home a lot of the time” but generally neglect Coraline (Gaiman 5). When Coraline a...
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...r into Coraline and the readers. The more wicked the other mother becomes; the less she looks like Coraline’s real mother. This fear brings out the courage in Coraline where she challenges her mother to a game that she is awfully good at, “’an exploring game’” (Gaiman 90). Coraline’s exploring game is like a mystery trying to be solved. She is trying to find her parents and the soul of the three little ghosts so she can set them free and free herself from the other mother. Since the other mother is the creator of this world, will she make the things Coraline needs to find hard so that Coraline will “be a most dutiful daughter,” “let [her] love [Coraline]” and that she will be “with [her] forever” (Gaiman 89)? This game of chance makes the readers want to know what Coraline’s fate will turn out to be in the end and whether she will defeat the malicious other mother.
By annihilating more than three-fourths of her appurtenances, homeowner Higgins perceives an alleviating ecstasy. Living in a tiny house creates a sense of disengagement from the outside society; nothing adheres one in a tiny house to follow the principles of the popular conceptions. The fundamentals of life in a tiny house is lived out by Lora Higgins; she believes in "living smaller, living simpler so I can be free to travel more and experience more" (Joyner 26-27). Higgins is endowed in being adept to encounter bounteous adventures and life-changing experiences; she has become more observant of nature and the important
As Jacqueline got to the age where her grandparents home was just a constant routine, never seen as anything but a cycle, her mother takes her and the family to New York for “new opportunities”. Jackie thinks of the idea as an adventure till she sees the pale grey streets
The girl's mother is associated with comfort and nurturing, embodied in a "honeyed edge of light." As she puts her daughter to bed, she doesn't shut the door, she "close[s] the door to." There are no harsh sounds, compared to the "buzz-saw whine" of the father, as the mother is portrayed in a gentle, positive figure in whom the girl finds solace. However, this "honeyed edge of li...
After hearing a brief description of the story you might think that there aren’t many good things about they story. However, this is false, there are many good things in this book that makes it a good read. First being that it is a very intriguing book. This is good for teenage readers because often times they don’t willingly want to read, and this story will force the teenage or any reader to continue the book and continue reading the series. Secondly, this is a “good” book because it has a good balance of violence. This is a good thing because it provides readers with an exciting read. We hear and even see violence in our everyday life and I believe that it is something teenagers should be exposed to. This book gives children an insig...
Countless times throughout Robinson’s work, the idea of the home is used as a way to contrast society’s views, and what it means to the characters of Robinson’s novels. In Robinson’s most famous novel Housekeeping, two young girls experience life in a home built by their grandfather, but altered by every person that comes to care for them. After their mother
George and Ophelia grow up in significantly different environments with exposure to vastly dissimilar experiences; their diverse backgrounds have a profound impact on the way they interpret and react to situations as adults. George and Ophelia both grow up without their parents, but for different reasons. George grows up at the Wallace P. Andrews Shelter for Boys in New York. The Shelter’s strict surroundings did not provide the warm and inviting atmosphere that a mother strives for in a home. The employees at the Shelter are not “loving people,” (p. 23) but they are devoted to their job, and the boys. At a young age, Ophelia loses her mother. We learn very little about her apparently absent father. Mama Day and Abigail raise Ophelia. Abigail provides a source of comfort and love for Ophelia as she fulfills the role of mother figure. Mama day, Ophelia’s great aunt, acts more as a father figure. “If Grandma had been there, she would have held me when I broke down and cry. Mama Day only said that for a long time there would be something to bring on tears aplenty.” (p. 304). Ophelia grows up on the small island of Willow Springs. Everyone knows each other and their business, in the laid-back island community. The border between Georgia and South Carolina splits down the middle of the island. Instead of seeing any advantage to belonging to either state, the townspeople would prefer to operate independently. For George and Ophelia, the differences in their backgrounds will have a tremendous impact on many facets of their adult lives.
First, When Martha and Mrs. Peters arrive at the scene of the crime, they see that it is a very lonely place off the road. The house is in a hollow, with lone-some looking trees around it(1).Mr. Hale thinks that having a phone to communicate with rest of the world in such place will reduce loneliness although Mr. Wright does not want communication(2). Minnie lives a miserable life in this place. Martha cannot believe that this is what Minnie foster has turned into. She describes her rocker, and says: “ that rocker don’t look in the least like Minnie foster. The Minnie foster of twenty years before”(3). The rocker is a very old rocker with a faded color and few parts of it are missing. Also, Mrs. Hale thinks it is a torture for Minnie to wrestle with the stove year after year because that stove is in a very poor condition(8). These are some few examples that show how miserable Minnie is in such a lonely place.
...cts of the mother and the descriptions, which are presented to us from her, are very conclusive and need to be further examined to draw out any further conclusions on how she ?really? felt. The mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her daughter bring up many questions as to their exact connection. At times it seems strong, as when the narrator is relating her childhood and recounting the good times. Other times it is very strained. All in all the connection between the two seems to be a very real and lifelike account of an actual mother-daughter relationship.
The mother-daughter relationship is a common topic throughout many of Jamaica Kincaid's novels. It is particularly prominent in Annie John, Lucy, and Autobiography of my Mother. This essay however will explore the mother-daughter relationship in Lucy. Lucy tells the story of a young woman who escapes a West Indian island to North America to work as an au pair for Mariah and Lewis, a young couple, and their four girls. As in her other books—especially Annie John—Kincaid uses the mother-daughter relationship as a means to expose some of her underlying themes.
Marie’s grandparent’s had an old farm house, which was one of many homes in which she lived, that she remembers most. The house was huge, she learned to walk, climb stairs, and find hiding places in it. The house had a wide wrap around porch with several wide sets of stairs both in front and in back. She remembers sitting on the steps and playing with one of the cats, with which there was a lot of cats living on the farm...
We have all heard the African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The response given by Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, simply states, “If you’ve got a village. But if you don’t, then maybe it just takes two people” (Donoghue 234). For Jack, Room is where he was born and has been raised for the past five years; it is his home and his world. Jack’s “Ma” on the other hand knows that Room is not a home, in fact, it is a prison. Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story but give significance as well. The Point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side with conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel.
Coraline looked for a pen and a paper and started looking. She found her neighbor Mr. B which was trying to do a circus with rats. She found a small door behind their house´s wall locked up. She called her mother for her to open it. Suddenly, when she opened it there was a wall. The door remained open during the night. Coraline already had gone to sleep; she heard the squeak of a mouse around her bedroom door. It was kind of like a kangaroo mouse. It drives her to the small door which was like kind of a tunnel to another world dimension where her parents actually had time for her and worked in other things liked making her life pleasant. After she ate a delicious dinner she went to bed and by the time she waked up she was already at her original home.
The home in which a child lives in is suppose to be a place of warmth, love, and protection. A home also offers other important aspects into a child’s life, for instance, self-confidence, pride, and security. If a child does not reside in a home that offers warmth, love, and protection, that child will not feel good about herself or the home in which she lives in. A child wants a home that he or she can be proud of enough to bring home a friend or two. In addition, if a child does not feel safe and secure in his or her home, then she will not posses these qualities in the outside world. Moreover, their lack of security can cause major disruptions and distractions within their everyday routine, like with Sandra. For example, the homes that Lena and Sandra live in illustrate the exact opposite of each other.
Aubery Tanqueray, a self-made man, is a Widower at the age of Forty two with a beautiful teenage daughter, Ellean whom he seems very protective over. His deceased wife, the first Mrs. Tanqueray was "an iceberg," stiff, and assertive, alive as well as dead (13). She had ironically died of a fever "the only warmth, I believe, that ever came to that woman's body" (14). Now alone because his daughter is away at a nunnery he's found someone that can add a little life to his elite, high class existence; a little someone, we learn, that has a past that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of his friends.
In essence, Coraline is presented to be the polar opposite of the typical quest structure. Coraline begins with an unhappy family, disruption in the form of desire (Coraline’s ideal happiness), and the return to Coraline’s world with significant character change. Not only does it contradict the typical quest structure, but also Coraline’s quest focuses on the character changing aspects of the quest. The coming of age quest is used to emphasize the changes Coraline goes through during the quest. As a final act of releasing her childhood, Coraline buries the hand of the other mother in the real world. Coraline finally cuts all connection with her childhood and the other world with this act.