Jonathan Challita
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces thoroughly yet simply outlines and describes the seventeen stages of the monomyth also known as the hero’s quest. The seventeen steps are a way of breaking down the story of good versus evil in stories dealing with a hero in a supernatural environment. There are several elements of the Hero’s Quest that are found in the novel Coraline written by Neil Gaiman.
The call to adventure is the point in the story when the hero seems to be bored of the usual everyday situation and receives some type of information that would act as a gadfly sending the hero into the unknown. In the story of Coraline this call to adventure takes place when Coraline, a young and adventurous girl, feels less than content with her situation. She decides to explore her new surroundings, having just moved into a new place with her parents that was far from anywhere she knew, she heads downstairs to the cellar where two older women lived and had a cup of tea. Having a cup of tea with your new neighbors seemed harmless until Coraline passed her cup to the women, who wanted to examine her tea leaves in order to tell Coraline her fortune. As it turns out, Coraline’s tea leaves resembled great danger. After hearing this news, Coraline wasn’t scared or worried, instead she was excited with the thought of the adventure ahead of her. Miss Forcible and Miss Spink, the women living in the cellar, were scared for Coraline so they offered to help her in the only way they knew, which leads to the step of the supernatural aid.According to the Mono myth, after the hero has committed to the quest ahead of them weather they were conscious of the decision or not, the hero’s guides become recognized by offering help, guidance, and other things such as talismans or artifacts. It is at this point of the story when miss Forcible and Miss Spink give a type of talisman to Coraline to help her along her journey. Coraline thinks nothing of the talisman being a rock with a hole going through it. In fact it is around this point that she thinks to herself that all grown-ups are out of their mind. As the story goes on, Coraline notices a mysterious door in a room of her flat that no one is supposed to enter. This door turns out to be the entrance to another dimension which leads Coraline into the crossing of the first threshold.
The crossing of the first threshold is the point of the story when the person physically crosses into a new dangerous world leaving their world behind. The capabilities and rules of this place are completely unknown, mysterious and have unlimited amounts of potential danger lurking around every corner. One day Coraline decides to check out the door as her mother and father are out and about. Coraline unlocks the door that supposedly leads nowhere, being blocked by a brick wall, but when the door opens it is no longer blocked by bricks, now it seems to be a hallway. Coraline being the adventurer that she is, journeys through this hallway and exits through what seems to be the same door she walked into. Coraline found herself back in her flat except this flat seemed a little off to her. She had slipped into a new world that seemed to be made for her. This new world accounted for all the wrongs in her old one. Her father was there for her, Her mother cooked excellent meals for her, her toys came to life, and the stray cat, that she would see in passing in her old world, could now talk to her. The cat ends up being another source of supernatural aid.
The large black cat’s voice reminded Coraline of the voice in the back of her head except she says that it was a man’s voice not a girl’s voice. Often the voice in the back of your head is your thought process or conscience. The fact that it was a man’s voice instead of a girl’s, stood out to me, in stead of keeping the age similar and saying it was a boy’s voice, she said man’s. That symbolizes a wise man and the fact that it is her conscience in a way it could be seen as her thought process is maturing and she has had this knowledge all along but is now in this alternate world beginning to listen to it. The cat ends up being very helpful throughout the story and it guides her, being the only thing that seemed to remain to be the same between the two worlds. The cat along with what seemed to be the souls of some children, that went down Coraline’s path before her, helped her realize that she cannot continue to run from her other mother. This is when Coraline found herself in the belly of the whale.
The belly of the whale is used to represent the point of the story that the hero puts their foot down and realizes what they must do in order to truly escape the situation that they find themselves in. Coraline gets thrown into a mirror, which acts as a type of cell, for misbehavior according to the other mother. It is in this cell that Coraline realizes what she must do. She obtains some words of wisdom from the spirits of children that came before her and it is now that she realizes that she has to escape this world but in order to do so, she must comply with the other mothers rules and beat her at her own game. This is the point of the story that leads into the road of trials.
The road of trials is a series of trials and tribulations. These tests or tasks are usually given in sets of threes. After being released from the mirror cell that her other mother placed her in, Coraline decided to play the other mother at her own game. Coraline offered to give herself to the other mother if she could not find the souls that the other mother had trapped within the other world for the chance to free the three children’s souls, herself and her parents. The other mother accepted the deal and promised on her right hand that she would free everyone if Coraline could find their souls.Conveniently there happened to be three children which makes for three souls that needed to be found. Coraline was able to keep the other mother out of her way because she happened to have the talisman from earlier in the story. She was also able to see the souls of the children while looking through the hole in the rock. Each of the children’s souls were in a different place within the other mother’s world and each soul took a great amount of courage and wits to be able to obtain them. After collecting the children’s souls Coraline must collect her parents as well. Her other parents can be seen as the ultimate boon.
The ultimate boon is what the hero has been seeking on the quest. Along her journey Coraline grew stronger and more courageous and wittier.She recalls that there was an odd looking snow globe in her other flat which had two people in it. She thought nothing of it before but it was clear to her now that those were her parents. with he other mother guarding the snow globe she realized that she would have to trick her in order to obtain her parents and get back to her real world.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
