Fighting For Love In Neil Gaiman's 'Coraline'

Intro:

Coraline demonstrates the concept of fighting for something that you love, and portrays this throughout the three versions of ‘Coraline’. She shows that she is a loving and determined character, and that she perseveres to fight for what she loves, whether it be other people, herself, or just to do what is right. The three main things that Coraline fights for are her family, herself and the ghost children, or the greater good. These are explored in depth in the novel, by Neil Gaiman, the graphic novel by P. Craig Russel and also the movie, directed by Henry Selick.

Body:

When Coraline enters the other mother’s world, she soon realises that she wants to leave, but the other mother is determined to keep her in the other world forever. Coraline fights for her life, and she fights for her own freedom. She fights to be free from the other mother’s controlling and unpleasant ways, determined to go back home. Coraline could have easily given up, and let the other mother win, but she decided to keep fighting and eventually won because of her efforts. She was strong-minded the whole time, and never once thought about giving up, as she values her life and freedom enough to fight as hard as she can to survive.

During the novel, Coraline says many things such as “I’ll get us both home. I said I would. I promise.” (p. 151) and “If the only way out

Selick added a scene where she crawls into her parent’s bed and makes other versions of her parents out of pillows to sleep with for her own comfort. From this, the viewer can easily infer that Coraline misses her parents and loves them immensely. This makes it easier to see that she loves them so much, that she’s willing to fight, and even risk her own life for theirs. It showed a lot of emotion, and... This wasn’t portrayed as much in either of the novels, which only spoke of Coraline falling asleep in their