Coraline

The Other Mother, or the beldam, is a mysterious figure. Not much is known about her origins or the extent of her power. The cat refers to her as a creature in Chapter 5, though it refuses to elaborate. The other mother has created the other world, which consists of her own versions of “the house, the grounds, and the people in the house” (69). When Coraline comments on the small size of the world, the cat likens the Other Mother to a spider, whose web “only [has] to be large enough to catch flies” (73). Over time, the Other Mother’s appearance morphs from something resembling Coraline’s mom to an unrecognizable creature. Coraline notices the Other Mother’s teeth grow sharper, and her hair “writhed and twined about her head” (126). Eventually, Coraline realizes “The other mother did not look anything at all like her own mother” (126). This shift occurs slowly as the Other Mother’s true dark nature is revealed.

When Coraline is trapped in the mirror closet, she meets the ghost children—former victims of the other mother. They have been trapped there and left in the dark after the other mother “stole our hearts, and she stole our souls, and she took our lives away” (82). The children explain that the other mother feeds on her victims until they are “only snakeskins and spider husks” (83). This explains the other mother’s motivation for pursuing Coraline. The other bother shifts from trying to tempt Coraline with love, food, and attention to trying to trap Coraline by using her parents as bait. She does everything in her power to prevent Coraline from leaving, including locking the door, setting the other father out to attack Coraline, and playing unfairly in their game.

Nevertheless, the other mother is bested by her own ego when she attempts to gloat to Coraline. To prove Coraline is wrong about her parents’ location, the other mother unlocks the door, inadvertently providing Coraline with an escape route. This leads to the defeat of the other mother and the freedom of Coraline, her parents, and the other mother’s previous victims.

The cat, who does not seem to have a name, is an ally of Coraline’s throughout her adventure. Coraline meets the cat in the real world, but whenever she tries to approach and befriend it, “it slipped away” (3). Once Coraline discovers the other world, she encounters the same cat there; only there, it can speak. The cat proves to be a useful friend to Coraline in many instances. It informs Coraline about the limits of the other world, as well as encourages Coraline to play a game with the other mother. Though the cat seems to know quite a bit about the other world and the other mother, it does not reveal many details to Coraline—just enough to help her survive. When Coraline’s parents disappear, the cat is the one who helps her realize where they are.

The cat plays an important role in the climax of the novel. Just as Coraline is about to get the third and final lost child’s soul, a rat takes it and evades her. Without this soul, Coraline is doomed to the fate the other mother has planned for her. However, the cat saves Coraline by catching and killing the rat. Then, as Coraline faces the other mother, she throws the cat at her face. The cat could have leapt off of the other mother, but it instead plays along and attacks the other mother’s face viciously. This moment is crucial to Coraline’s escape as it distracts the other mother just long enough. Without the cat’s knowledge and participation in Coraline’s escape, Coraline would have failed to defeat the other mother, making the cat one of Coraline’s most valuable allies.

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible are two aging theater actresses, who live in the lower flat of the house. Coraline visits them when she is bored. The ladies tend to carry on discussions about their past roles and reminisce about their glory days of performing. Physically, they are “both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of ageing Highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock” (1). These ladies help Coraline in her journey by reading her tea leaves. They warn Coraline that she is in danger and provide her with the stone with a hole in it, which becomes a vital token to Coraline’s later success.

The other Miss Spink and Miss Forcible are, by contrast, young and thin with button eyes. They live in a perpetual performative state, forever living out their glory days on the stage in front of a theater of Scottie dogs. Coraline is amused by their show, but when she returns to their flat to find one of the lost children’s souls, she finds the two women have fused together into a single creature that inhabits an egg sac-like nest on the back wall of the stage. This creature guards the second soul Coraline retrieves, but the creature cannot leave the sac.

Mr. Bobo, or as he’s known throughout most of the novel, the crazy old man upstairs, is the eccentric upstairs neighbor to Coraline’s family. He trains a mouse circus with tiny instruments, and his flat smells of “strange foods and pipe tobacco and odd, sharp, cheesy-smelling things Coraline could not name” (113). For most of the book, Mr. Bobo mistakes Coraline’s name for Caroline, despite her attempts to correct him. At the end of the book, once Coraline has learned Mr. Bobo’s name, he also finally gets hers correct. Mr. Bobo himself is less significant to Coraline’s journey than his mice are. Mr. Bobo relays several messages to Coraline from his mice, the first being a warning to not go through the door. At the end, after Coraline has defeated the other mother and her hand, Mr. Bobo relays the message that the mice believe “that all is good” and that Coraline is their savior (158), which reassures Coraline that she is finally finished with the other mother.

The other Mr. Bobo is successful with his circus. However, he works with rats instead of mice. The other Mr. Bobo’s rats sing creepy, unsettling songs; dance; and form a pyramid. They hide in the other Mr. Bobo’s clothing. When Coraline is seeking the final lost soul, the other Mr. Bobo tries to convince her of how great her life would be if she stayed. However, he soon reveals that he is also just an empty version of the real Mr. Bobo and falls apart into rats.

The ghost children are the three children Coraline meet in the closet-sized mirror room. They are former victims of the other mother, and now they are just empty husks of themselves. They are trapped in the other world and cannot leave because the other mother has hidden their souls away. They warn Coraline about the fate that awaits her if she cannot escape the other mother. As Coraline works to find their souls, the ghost children—two girls and a boy—whisper help to her. It is because of the ghost children that Coraline knows to look through the hole in the stone, which is what aids her in finding their lost souls. The ghost children show how valuable they are as Coraline’s allies when she is making her escape from the other world. Though they are “somehow too insubstantial to touch the door” (131), they lend their strength to Coraline and allow her to close the door to the other world behind her. Finally, as they are set free, they warn Coraline of the other mother’s right hand pursuing her, which allows Coraline to prepare for the danger and stay two steps ahead of the hand.