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• 1 2020-04-21T12:10:12-07:00 To the Other World 7 Boredom and Family Leading to Monsters plain 2020-04-29T19:58:59-07:00

  Neil Gaiman's Coraline also has the main character travel to another realm to discover the monsters. Coraline Jones, bored in her new flat, travels through the "door to nowhere" (Gaiman 00:09:40) in the drawing room, despite the various warnings that she receives from the mice in Mr. Bobo's (the crazy old man who lives in the attic of the house) circus to not go through the door (00:17:40) and from Miss Spink and Miss Forcible who say she is in "terrible danger" (00:22:28) after reading her tea leaves. Coraline finds herself in her own home (00:30:55), but something was not quite right. Everyone in this world has black buttons for eyes and are known as the Other (Other Mother, Other Father, etc.). Coraline returns home to find that her parents have been taken by her Other Mother, who wants Coraline to stay with her. She eventually challenges the Other Mother to a "finding things game" (02:05:00) to free herself, her parents, and the souls of other children the Other Mother wanted from the Other World. Coraline is eventually able to beat the Other Mother and return home, but she must finally trap the Other Mother's right hand in the well near her home so that she and the black key that unlocks the door to nowhere can never torment anyone ever again.

  Coraline's adventure is caused by her boredom with her family and the lack of interest that the adults in her life show her. Her parents often work from home and therefore pay little attention to her when they are home, since a majority of their attention is given to their work. Mr. Bobo, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible cannot remember Coraline's name (calling her Caroline most of the time), so it is not a shock that Coraline finds herself in a place where the adults around her appear to be those she knows from her normal life and the work is "much more interesting than at home" (00:54:32). The adults in the Other World appear to be like the adults she knows, with the exception of the black buttons sewn where their eyes are. In fact when Coraline returns to the Other World to find her parents, she runs towards who she believes to be her mother only to find out that it is Other Mother when she is embraced by her (01:14:47). Other Mother is the one who creates and controls the world (01:29:56), so she is the Other with the most power. She is the one who wants Coraline to stay, in hopes of stealing her soul and taking her heart for power as she did with the other children Coraline meets in the mirror (01:48:16). Other Mother is a "vampiric monster" (Lee 555), bringing many ideas about monsters that are human-like or were once human to mind. It is with Coraline's "rejection of the id-inspired Other World" (556) that she can appreciate her own world and see wonderful it is in comparison (Gaiman 03:03:09). Through Coraline's story, children see the danger of getting everything in life and what happens when they take the life they have for granted, because perhaps they too will create monsters and Others who want to keep them forever.