Another question for those finished with Coraline
Don't open this until you are done!
posted by Nick at 2:10 PM
Monday, January 22, 2007
About Me
- Name: Andy Duncan
- Location: Frostburg, Maryland, United States
I'm a professor of English at Frostburg State University in the western Maryland mountains; a fiction writer whose honors include a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and three World Fantasy Awards; a journalist since age 17; and a lifelong collector of Forteana.
Previous Posts
- Hey, late introduction post
- Coraline
- Pan's Labryinth
- The Ausable Chasm
- on today...
- Favorites?
- thought on Stone Animals
- Initial thoughts.
- Hihi.
- Since everybody's making TV references...
9 Comments:
Does anyone think that Coraline's parents remember their experience in the snow globe. First I thought they definitely didn't remember, but how can they explain two days disappearing, especially since Coraline says that they are not the type of people who ever lose track of time.
I don't think they really remember what happened. I think it's more of the situation with old people who forget what really happened: they make up some reality that could very well make sense. You know, if the couple doesn't remember exactly how they first met, they just choose some possibility, and that becomes their new reality. So, I think they're just believing something else, maybe they went on vacation or something. Who knows for sure, though?
I didn't get the impression the parents were that old. I thought it was more along the lines of them not being able to accept it rationally, so they just blocked it out. Kind of like trauma victims refusing to accept what's happened. Either that, or they're just that absentminded that they could misplace two days and not notice (trust me, I know people like this).
That's what I was trying to say. I was just using the old people as an example.
I agree with tara. The parents weren't that old. They might not even realize that two days have even gone by. I mean from what the book showed of them they mainly stay indoors and work. I don't think they have any recollection of the event.
That's my thought as well: that they just never really realized that they couldn't remember two days (when they're as monotonous as the parents' days sound, it's easy to do--they all run together. I've done it myself. XD). That, or they did fabricate some memory to fill in the blank. I don't think they actually remember it--even if they did, I doubt they would accept it as reality as easily as a child, namely Coraline, did: they'd probably be more likely to just chalk it up to a weird dream and go on about their business.
I could completely buy the parents imagining it was a dream - I've had crazier ones. And sometimes I've gone through the day mad at people, not realizing until I really thought about it that they actually had done something in a dream, and I was getting real life and a dream life confused..
i'm going to be about the fifth person to agree with the parents blocking their experience in the snowglobe out, and part of me wonders if it was ever even really a part of their life...not sure if that makes sense but i guess i'm trying to say that to me it seems almost as if for a couple days they weren't even really existing while coraline figured everything out
I think it synchs with a lot of "Gaiman logic": they didn't notice they were gone because, well, they're just floaty, flaky people.
You have to wonder, however, if they could have blocked EVERYTHING out. I know it's fairy tale rules at work here, but it wasn't like they couldn't communicate when they were trapped in the mirror/snowglobe.
-Nick.
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