Bokmalans betyg II

Essä nummer två, som handlade om Coraline, fick också högsta betyg:

"Very good essay, I like Nikolajeva's works myself and consider fantasemes to be an interesting topic for discussions. Your grade is VG."

Hurraaa!, säger Bokmalan, som håller på med det sista på Rendezvous with Rama och snart skall påbörja Tanith Lees Biting the Sun. To be continued ...

The door, the dream and other fantastical elements

In this essay I aim to explore some of the fantastical elements used in the children’s fantasy novel Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I use literary professor Maria Nikolajeva’s book The Magical Code (1988) as a tool for finding these elements – elements that Nikolajeva calls fantasemes.

The secondary world in Coraline seems to exist parallel with “our” reality and is accessible from the primary world through a portal. The door and the mysterious tunnel are the passageway to the other world. The door is portrayed as a mystery, something forbidden as it’s in the room where Coraline is not allowed and it’s accessed with a great rusty key.

But although the secondary world is open, it is, of course, not open to anyone. For instance, when Coraline’s mother open’s the door, nothing happens: “Her mother was right. The door didn’t go anywhere. It opened into a brick wall.” (p. 9) But when Coraline opens the door herself, this scene emerges:

Coraline put her hand on the doorknob and turned it; and finally, she opened the door. It opened on to a dark hallway. The bricks had gone as if they’d never been there. There was a cold, musty smell coming through the opened doorway: it smelled like something very old and very slow. (p. 26)

It could be read as a comment on how Coraline’s parents doesn’t give her enough attention as well as a way of showing how grown ups in general focuses on more mundane things than children, hence missing the magic. This is recurrent in children’s fiction and in children’s fantasy especially.

The dream, often used as a passageway in fantasy , doesn’t have that function in Coraline. But it serves as sort of a warning of things to come, for instance when Coraline dreams of meeting a rat and follows it to the drawing room, where the main gateway actually exists (p. 10).

We gather there might be other passageways as well, like the cat’s ability to move between realities. Later on we realise that Coraline isn’t the only child who have been visiting the secondary world, when she finds the ghosts of the other children.

Nikolajeva discusses journey patterns in children’s fantasy and establishes that the most common pattern in the circular journey. The character (or characters) makes a travel to the secondary world and then return to the safe haven of home. Gaiman toys a bit with this notion.

Firstly, Coraline is forced to enter the passageway to the other world a second time, after returning and finding her parents missing. Also, to remove the parents is a very effective way to make the whole text seem unsure and not safe.

Like I wrote on the forum, the secondary world consists of the elements of Coraline’s reality – her house, the closest surroundings, her parents and the other people living in the building. But all the elements are slightly twisted and changed, in a silently threatening manner. This makes the secondary world more confusing and creepy than if it had been a completely different universe.

Secondly, when Coraline returns to her real home the second time, the threat of the Beldam is still present. Not even the primary world is allowed to be a safe haven. So, the goal must be not only to arrive at the primary world, but to cut off all connections to the threatening secondary world.

Many of the magical items existing in fantasy derive from folk lore, myth and fairie tales. In Coraline we have the magical mirror, which we recognize from Snow White as well as Through the Looking-Glass.

It doesn’t function as a passageway in Coraline, but it serves other purposes. When the other mother kidnaps Coraline’s parents, she is able to see this through the mirror. Also the mirror functions as a prison for Coraline and the ghost children:

She pulled Coraline back into the hallway and advanced upon the mirror at the end of the hall. Then she pushed the tiny key into the fabric of the mirror, and she twisted it. It opened like a door, revealing a dark space behind it. [---] There she swung the mirror closed, and left Coraline in darkness. (p. 80)

Another magical item is the seeing-stone that Coraline gets from Miss Spink. The stone works as a protection for Coraline, and it allows her to feel safer when spending time in the strange secondary world. It’s also used as a weapon in the struggle against the other mother, when Coraline uses the stone to be able to find the souls of the ghost children (for instance, p. 97). The souls actually take the form of small glass marbles, which is suiting – to put something serious and vitally important into the form of an ordinary toy.

Connected to the magical items is also the concept of a magical helper, writes Nikolajeva, which in children’s fantasy often consists of talking animal, preferably domestic ones. Like the cat in Coraline. But cats may also be viewed as magical creatures with connotations to witchcraft.

The cat often serves as a reluctant helper to Coraline throughout the novel, for instance, in telling that the Beldam is fond of “games and challenges” (p. 65) It is also the cat that shows Coraline that her parents are missing, although he can’t speak in the primary world. “The cat made no reply, but Coraline could imagine its voice, as dry as a dead fly on a windowsill in winter, saying Well, where do you think they are?” (p. 54)

Typically, the rats serve as minions to the other mother, as rats often are associated with filth and diseases. The mice in the novel, however, serve as messengers twice in the novel, warning Coraline about the going through the door in the beginning and finally telling her the primary world is safe again in the end.

To conclude – it was quite easy to establish some of the fantasemes used in Gaiman’s Coraline. The structure of the secondary world as only open to some creatures (Coraline, the cat, the earlier children). The door is a classical fantaseme, though in this version it is accompanied by the mysterious tunnel as well.

Classical is also the function of the dream as something more than just a dream. In this case, the dream serves as a sort of warning or premonition for Coraline.
Gaiman builds his novel on the circular journey pattern often used in children’s fantasy, but makes it into a loop movement: there and back again and then there and back again, again, so to speak.

To use the protagonist’s primary world as a model for the threatening secondary world, like Gaiman does, is not the most common thing in fantasy. This increases the feelings of insecurity and threat in the text, in my opinion. As does the fact that the dangers of the secondary world are allowed back into the primary world.

Magical items, another type of fantaseme, appear, such as the mirror, the seeing stone and the children’s souls, disguised as glass marbles. A magical helper exists as well, albeit a bit reluctant – the cat. The talking cat form is also typical in children’s fiction, as it’s a domestic animal, chosen for a sense of safety. Other magical animals appearing are the threatening rats and the helpful mice.

My conclusion is that Gaiman uses a lot of classical fantaseme in Coraline, but that they seem to be worked with quite deliberately and that in many ways Gaiman also breaks our expectations for a fantasy novel for young children.

Bokmalans betyg

På mailen idag hittade Bokmalan sitt omdöme för essäen hon lämnat in till sin Science fiction & fantasykurs:

"Thank you very much for your impressive composition! The choice of topic was very good, the quality of the paper is excellent: all three elements of composition are present, structural organization of the paragraphs and descriptive language. Well done – VG."

Det tackar vi för!

A story on Faerie, love and magical music

In this essay I aim to discuss what I find to be the major themes in the novel War for the Oaks by author Emma Bull – love, magic and music. My intention is to discuss how the themes of love and music relate to the realm of Faerie and the concept of magic in the book.

To achieve this goal I aim to use both the novel itself, thoughts gathered from the courses forum and the book review by Michael M. Jones that was included in the syllabus.

To gather my thoughts on the subject I’ll start with some descriptions on Eddi and why she was chosen to be connected with Faerie in the first place. In the prologue the Phouka tells the Glaistig that Eddi “makes music, the kind that moves heart and body.” (p. 13) It is mainly this musicality that leads the Phouka to contact Eddi, first in an off-hand way at the club: “The man had met her look with a silent challenge that made her skin prickle.” (p. 19)

This prickling of the skin is of course a warning for us that something is about to happen, and also a way to show that Eddi is in fact chosen by Faerie. The fact that also Stuart notices the Phouka gives us a clue to the fact that Stuart also has a little magic of his own, which is later established.

All of Eddi’s life seems to circle around the topic of music: “The rhythm of her steps reminded her of a dozen different songs at once, and she hummed one softly to herself.” (p. 24) This description of her suggests that she’s almost filled with music to the brim. Music is so alive in Bull’s world that it almost takes physical form. Actually, when the band is complete with all the band members, Eddi’s musicality gives surprising results, when she unconsciously starts to cast illusions when on-stage (p. 226).

This also shows us how well her musicality connects to the Faerie magic (“Deceptions, illusions and tricks of the light”, as the Phouka says on page 187). Either Eddi’s musicality is a way to make her more receptive to Faerie magic, like an entrance or a short cut. Or music is a magic of its own accord, but compatible with the magicks of Faerie. Like Michael M. Jones writes in his books review on War for the Oaks that “the songs are an essential part of the magic of this book”.

The idea of music as a kind of magic is also strengthen by Eddi’s resistance against glamour – both the Glaistig’s and Willy’s – and is confirmed by the Phouka:

She has her own magic, Willy lad. All poets do all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their hearts. They all straddle on the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds. (p. 174)

Finally, the fact that the Queen of Air and Darkness allows for the duel to be determined by music seems to settle on the concept of music as magic (p. 301).

The quote above also shows us how thin the line is between Faerie and “our” reality. Musicians and poets have through out history apparently crossed the line very naturally. The author’s description of the Nicollet Mall in the prologue of the book also illustrates how the two worlds co-exist and sometimes overlap. The subtle changes in the text give a more otherworldly feel than the banks and department stores in the first paragraph:

The street lamp globes hang like myriad moons, and light glows in the empty bus shelters like nebulae.[---] Near the south end of the mall, in front of the Orchestra Hall, Peavy Plaza beckons: a reflecting pool, and a cascade that descends from towering chrome cylinders to a sunken walk-in maze of stone blocks and pillars for which “fountain” is an inadequate name. In the moonlight, it is black and silver, gray and white, full of an elusive play of shape and contrast. (p.13)

Through carefully chosen adjectives and parables, Bull creates a change in the ordinary city, leading it to the parallel reality of Faerie. Geographically it seems the same, but the worlds are notably different.

The Phouka (or Robin Goode as he jokingly names himself – a wink to the character of Puck, who disguised himself as Robin Goodfellow ), is certainly a creature of Faerie. Jones writes that the “Fey, after all, are capricious, whimsical, mysterious, and operate on a level completely alien to us.” In the book itself the Phouka’s mercurial temperament is often commented. But he is not only that. He is also the character becoming Eddi’s closest and most reliable friend.

The Phouka is described in the beginning of the book as a threatful and quite menacing presence. Along the way, though, his appearance changes. The playful and teasingly flirtatious approach towards Eddi evolves into a real infatuation and the uncomfortable truce between them actually turns into friendship. Jones summarizes him as Eddi’s “bane, her protector, her nemesis, and her confidante.”

In the strict Seelie court, the Phouka’s status isn’t especially high, as seen for instance in the conflicts between the Phouka and the Sidhe Lord, Willy. And in his relationship with Eddi he seems discontent with some of the structures in Faerie and has plans to change these (p. 318). Jones describes the Phouka as “a ‘common’ Fey with some plans of his own”. The Phouka feels more like a powerful being when away from the hierarchies of court.

One aspect of the Phouka’s discontentment is shown when the actions of Willy are discussed and the Phouka describes his kind’s inability to feel true love, something he is not proud of (p. 186). In his strong reaction we clearly see the Phouka’s feelings of love towards Eddi.

It was my intention to look at how the themes of love and music relate to the realm of Faerie and the concept of magic in the book. My conclusion is that music is portrayed as a magic in its own, although it is related to or compatible with the magicks of Faerie.

This is showed through the facts that the fey always been drawn to human bards, poets and musicians and that they have kind of glamour of their own. The fact that two of the musicians in Eddi’s band actually are fey also shows that they are drawn to music. And, as I concluded earlier in the text, that music is an acceptable form for duelling, seems to settle the question of music as a form of magic.

The major love story in the novel is that of Eddi and the Phouka. My conclusion is that they are drawn to each other because they are portrayed as kind of borderline creatures. They are both familiar and otherworldly for each other, since both of them are involved in two different realities – the human world and Faerie.