When Coraline Jones and her parents move to a new house in a new town, Coraline finds herself bored, unimpressed, and perhaps even a bit scared by her new surroundings. When Coraline is, however, plunged into a twisted alternate version of her new house—a kind of “web” created by the other mother in hopes of ensnaring her—she refuses to be fooled by a cheap imitation of the place she is learning to call home. As Neil Gaiman interrogates what “home” means, he ultimately ends up suggesting that home is not necessarily a place that feels familiar or safe right away. Instead, home is the place one makes that way by building relationships, forming memories, and actively working to understand and inhabit fully.
Over the course of the novel, Gaiman plays with the idea of what “home” really is. As the story unfolds, Coraline goes from looking down on her new surroundings as strange and inhospitable to really loving and appreciating the place she gets the opportunity to call home. As Coraline explores the physical (and metaphysical) realm of her home, forms relationships with her neighbors, and has her own adventures inside her new house, what was once unknown becomes familiar—and the place that once intimidated and irritated her becomes an important touchstone. When Coraline first arrives at the new house her parents have bought—a flat that is part of a much-larger building bricked up into four separate apartments—she doesn’t particularly like the place. She’s curious about its grounds and she’s nice enough to her new neighbors, but there’s a definite part of Coraline that doesn’t feel at home. From the mysterious door in the drawing room to the fact that Coraline’s new neighbors call her “Caroline,” overlooking or misunderstanding her real name, the young Coraline feels distinctly disoriented and out of place in her new surroundings. She explores all she can and subjects herself to uncomfortable visits with Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (and the crazy old man upstairs, whose name Coraline never bothers to learn), but can’t make herself feel quite right about her new surroundings. Coraline doesn’t yet understand that home isn’t a place one moves into, ready-made—a true sense of home must be cultivated and honed.
In an attempt to understand her own house better, Coraline goes through a mysterious door in the drawing room late one night—and finds another world on the other side. An other mother and an other father are waiting for her happily, and tell her they hope she’ll stay in the home they’ve built for her. Though the other home is lavishly decorated, warm, and full of good food and unique toys, there’s something about it that seems off to Coraline. From the upsetting colors of her other bedroom to the peculiar, overzealous ways in which her other parents dote upon her, Coraline knows that for all their claims that this is her true home, the place in which she’s found herself isn’t any kind of home at all. As Coraline investigates the other mother’s world, she realizes that everything in it is a kind of perversion of her own world. The other Miss Spink and the other Miss Forcible enjoy happy careers as actresses, and the other crazy old man upstairs has command of an army of rats (unlike the “real” crazy old man, who longs to train a whimsical mouse circus) and yet there is something twisted and automated about them. The house that is ostensibly Coraline’s “home” grows flatter and vaguer each time Coraline does something to anguish or irritate the other mother—suggesting that her welcome is conditional, and that this “home” could evaporate right under Coraline’s feet at any moment. Coraline knows the place in which she’s found herself, whatever or wherever it may be, is not a real home because it’s lacking in the efforts required to turn a house into a home. There are no uncomfortable interactions with neighbors, there’s no settling in—and most sinisterly, there’s no option to leave.
After vanquishing the other mother, freeing her parents, and finding the souls of the lost children she’s imprisoned there—other children who, like Coraline, found themselves searching for an ideal set of parents and an ideal home after moving into a new place—Coraline returns to her real home. She is grateful to be back, and her behavior reflects that fact. She visits with her neighbors and, whereas before she only sat and endured their talk, she now asks them questions about their lives and learns more about them. She gives her parents the space they need to do their work, feel secure, and turn the house into a home on their own time. She understands now that home is a place that she must create for herself and those around her out of goodwill, love, and patience.
By the end of the novel, Coraline has been through a whirlwind journey and has reached a newfound appreciation for the idea of what makes a home. Creating a place where one feels at home is uncomfortable at first: one must make new friendships, shed old habits, and investigate and understand the physical structure and emotional soul of a place. In order to feel comfortable and at peace in her new surroundings, Coraline has had to break through her own discomfort—but after all she’s been through, Coraline now knows that somewhere that is truly home can’t be imitated or cheaply manufactured. A real home, Coraline suggests, is a place that must be slowly, carefully, and lovingly made.
Home and the Familiar ThemeTracker
Home and the Familiar Quotes in Coraline
[Coraline] dreamed of black shapes that slid from place to place, avoiding the light, until they were all gathered together under the moon. Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth.
They started to sing,
We are small but we are many
We are many we are small
We were here before you rose
We will be here when you fall.
The mist hung like blindness around the house. She walked slowly to the stairs up to her family’s flat, and then stopped and looked around.
In the mist, it was a ghost-world. In danger? thought Coraline to herself. It sounded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing. Not really.
Coraline went back upstairs, her fist closed tightly around her new stone.
“Coraline?” the woman said. “Is that you?”
And then she turned around. Her eyes were big black buttons.
“Lunchtime, Coraline,” said the woman.
“Who are you?” asked Coraline.
“I’m your other mother,” said the woman. “Go and tell your other father that lunch is ready,” She opened the door of the oven. Suddenly Coraline realized how hungry she was. It smelled wonderful.
[Coraline’s] other parents stood in the kitchen doorway as she walked down the corridor, smiling identical smiles, and waving slowly. “Have a nice time outside,” said her other mother.
“We’ll just wait here for you to come back,” said her other father.
When Coraline got to the front door, she turned back and looked at them. They were still watching her, and waving, and smiling.
The three of them walked back up to Coraline’s other house together. Coraline’s other mother stroked Coraline’s hair with her long white fingers. Coraline shook her head.
“Don’t do that,” said Coraline.
Her other mother took her hand away.
Coraline was woken by the midmorning sun, full on her face.
For a moment she felt utterly dislocated. She did not know where she was; she was not entirely sure who she was.
“If you won’t even talk to me,” said Coraline, “I am going exploring.”
“No point,” said the other father. “There isn’t anywhere but here. This is all she made: the house, the grounds, and the people in the house. She made it and she waited.” Then he looked embarrassed and he put one finger to his lips again, as if he had just said too much.
[The other mother] picked Coraline up, just as Coraline’s real mother had when Coraline was much younger, cradling the half-sleeping child as if she were a baby.
The other mother carried Coraline into the kitchen and put her down very gently upon the countertop.
Coraline struggled to wake herself up, conscious only for the moment of having been cuddled and loved, and wanting more of it, then realizing where she was and who she was with.
Outside, the world had become a formless, swirling mist with no shapes or shadows behind it, while the house itself seemed to have twisted and stretched. […]
The other mother was waiting for [Coraline], standing on the grass with her arms folded. Her black button eyes were expressionless, but her lips were pressed tightly together in a cold fury.
Coraline sighed. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said. “I don’t want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted? Just like that, and it didn’t mean anything. What then?”
“I don’t understand,” said the whispery voice.
“Of course you don’t understand,” she said, raising the stone with the hole in it to her eye. “You’re just a bad copy she made of the crazy old man upstairs.”
“Not even that anymore,” said the dead, whispery voice.
“Help me, please,” she said. “All of you.”
The other people in the corridor—three children, two adults—were somehow too insubstantial to touch the door. But their hands closed about hers, as she pulled on the big iron door handle, and suddenly she felt strong.
“Never let up, Miss! Hold strong! Hold strong!” whispered a voice in her mind.
“Pull, girl, pull!” whispered another.
And then a voice that sounded like her mother’s—her own mother, her real, wonderful, maddening, infuriating, glorious mother—just said, “Well done, Coraline,” and that was enough.
[Coraline] fancied she could hear sweet music on the night air: the kind of music that can only be played on the tiniest silver trombones and trumpets and bassoons, on piccolos and tubas so delicate and small that their keys could only be pressed by the tiny pink fingers of white mice.