The Adaptable Educator’s Book review – Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002) is a deceptively simple tale that operates on multiple literary and philosophical levels. At its surface, it is a dark fantasy novel aimed at children, telling the story of a young girl who stumbles upon a sinister parallel world. However, beneath its gothic veneer, Coraline is a deeply psychological narrative, engaging with existentialist themes, Jungian archetypes, and the nature of fear itself. Gaiman constructs a world where reality is fluid, where the uncanny replaces the familiar, and where the journey of self-discovery is both terrifying and necessary.

The Heroine’s Journey and Existential Autonomy

Coraline Jones is not a passive protagonist; she is an existential heroine who asserts her agency in a world that seeks to consume her. In many ways, her journey mirrors classic coming-of-age narratives, but it deviates from traditional hero’s journey structures by emphasizing independence over mentorship. Unlike fairy tale protagonists who often rely on external saviors, Coraline’s triumph is born of her own resilience and cunning. Her parents, though present, are absent in spirit, leaving her to navigate the metaphysical perils of the other world alone.

Gaiman crafts Coraline as a Sartrean protagonist, one who faces the terror of the void and asserts her will. The Other Mother, a monstrous doppelgänger with buttons for eyes, functions as both a literal and symbolic antagonist. She represents the suffocating comforts of false security—the temptations of an easier, more appealing existence that ultimately strips one of autonomy. This parallels Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of “bad faith,” in which individuals surrender their freedom in exchange for external validation. Coraline, however, refuses the illusion of happiness, choosing instead the messiness of reality over the artificial perfection of the other world.

The Uncanny and the Psychological Horror of the Familiar

Drawing from Freud’s concept of the Unheimlich (the uncanny), Gaiman renders the other world as a grotesque mirror of Coraline’s own reality. The Other Mother is not an alien entity but an uncanny distortion of maternal warmth—what should be nurturing becomes predatory. This taps into the primal childhood fear that one’s caregivers might not be as benevolent as they seem. The Other Mother’s obsessive love is possessive rather than protective; she desires not to raise Coraline but to consume her, to possess her essence in a perverse act of creation.

This distorted domesticity extends to the other world’s architecture. The house is the same, yet wrong—familiar yet alien. The talking cat, who serves as Coraline’s cryptic guide, navigates both worlds, reinforcing the blurred line between the known and the unknown. His refusal to be named underscores the novel’s larger theme: identity is self-defined, not bestowed by an external force.

Buttons for Eyes: A Commentary on Perception and Identity

The Other Mother’s insistence that Coraline sew buttons over her eyes is one of the novel’s most chilling images. Symbolically, eyes represent perception, awareness, and identity. By replacing them with buttons, Gaiman suggests a voluntary surrender of selfhood—an act of submission to an imposed narrative. The Other Children, ghostly remnants of those who succumbed before Coraline, serve as cautionary figures, stripped of individuality and trapped in perpetual limbo. They are the ultimate victims of conformity, those who have allowed their autonomy to be overwritten.

This act of enforced blindness resonates with dystopian themes found in works like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where society encourages passive contentment over critical thought. Coraline’s refusal to wear the buttons is a defiant assertion that she will not allow herself to be redefined by an outside force.

Fear as a Crucible for Growth

At its heart, Coraline is a meditation on fear—not as something to be avoided, but as a necessary trial for growth. Gaiman does not sanitize childhood terror; instead, he legitimizes it, showing that fear is not something to be conquered but something to be faced. By engaging with the darkness rather than retreating from it, Coraline does not merely survive—she evolves.

Gaiman’s prose, at once lyrical and unsettling, constructs a fairy tale that is both traditional and subversive. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Coraline takes its protagonist through a distorted reality where logic bends, but unlike Alice, Coraline is not a passive observer—she is a force of will.

In the end, Coraline transcends its genre as a children’s horror novel. It is a fable about self-determination, a psychological horror story rooted in the uncanny, and a philosophical treatise on the nature of reality and perception. It is, ultimately, a book about what it means to see—to truly see—and to choose the complexity of the real over the comfort of the illusion.