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felix-lupin · 10 months

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In Coraline, there’s a recurring theme with names and identity, and I personally don't think it's talked about enough.

(As a note, this is dealing largely with the book, not the movie, although there are some hints of this theme in the movie as well)

Coraline’s neighbors constantly get her name wrong, calling her “Caroline” and not “Coraline”, to which she persistently corrects them. Despite her attempts, they never get it right, until chapter 10, in which Mr Bobo (Mr Bobinsky) finally gets it right.

"It's Coraline, Mister Bobo," said Coraline. "Not Caroline. Coraline." "Coraline," said Mr Bobo, repeating her name to himself with wonderment and respect. "Very good, Coraline."

It should be noted that, until this chapter, Coraline did not know Mr Bobo’s name either. In fact, it had never even occurred to her that he had a name. Up until then, she had just been thinking of him as “the crazy old man upstairs”, not as a person with a name. This moment, with her learning his name and him getting her name right, is a moment of genuine understanding and connection between the two, humanizing them both to each other.

Coraline’s other neighbors get her name wrong, which is representative of them not listening when she says anything, really, such as her telling Miss Spink and Forcible that her parents are missing and them literally not even acknowledging it at all??

"How are your dear mother and father?" asked Miss Spink. "Missing," said Coraline. "I haven't seen either of them since yesterday. I'm on my own. I think I've probably become a single child family." "Tell your mother that we found the Glasgow Empire press clippings we were telling her about. She seemed very interested when Miriam mentioned them to her." "She's vanished under mysterious circumstances," said Coraline, "and I believe my father has as well." "I'm afraid we'll be out all day tomorrow, Caroline lovely," said Miss Forcible. "We'll be staying with April's niece in Royal Tunbridge Wells."

Mr Bobo gets her name right after being corrected (only after being corrected alongside her using his name, mind you, showcasing her making an effort to listen to and understand him as well), which is representative of him actually making an attempt to listen and understand her. This point is further illustrated by a conversation Coraline had with the Other Mr Bobo in chapter 10.

As Coraline entered he began to talk. "Nothing's changed, little girl," he said, his voice sounding like the noise dry leaves make as they rustle across a pavement. "And what if you do everything you swore you would? What then? Nothing's changed. You'll go home. You'll be bored. You'll be ignored. No one will listen to you, not really listen to you. You're too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don't even get your name right."

He equates those in the real world not getting Coraline’s name right with them not listening to her, and fundamentally not understanding who she is. So, somebody getting her name right, then, shows them actually listening to her, and being willing to understand who she is.

The mice in the real world know more than they should be able to know, and they also get Coraline’s name right.

"The message is this. Don't go through the door." He paused. "Does that mean anything to you?" "No," said Coraline. The old man shrugged. "They are funny, the mice. They get things wrong. They got your name wrong, you know. They kept saying Coraline. Not Caroline. Not Caroline at all."

They seem to know about the other world, somehow, on some level, and the dangers it presents. Them getting her name right represents them knowing more than they should know, more than they are told. Animals in general seem to have this type of quality in Coraline, actually.

The cat does not have a name. It says so in chapter 4, that cats do not need names. It says that this is because cats know who they are. But humans need names, because they do not.

"Please. What's your name?" Coraline asked the cat. "Look, I'm Coraline. OK?" The cat yawned softly, carefully, revealing a mouth and tongue of astounding pinkness. "Cats don't have names," it said. "No?" said Coraline. "No," said the cat. "Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."

The cat shook its head. "No," it said. "I'm not the other anything. I'm me." It tipped its head on one side; green eyes glinted. "You people are spread all over the place. Cats, on the other hand, keep ourselves together. If you see what I mean."

This shows that, in humans, names are connected to our identities and who we are. Names are used to individualize and distinguish ourselves from each other. But cats do not need names to recognize each other, or be recognized.

"Oh. It's you," she said to the black cat. "See?" said the cat. "It wasn't so hard recognising me, was it? Even without names."

With or without names, it is still the same cat.

During the Other Miss Spink and Forcible’s performance, in chapter 4, they begin quoting Shakespeare. The specific quotes that they use are interesting to me when looked at under this lens of the importance of names, especially Miss Forcible’s.

"What's in a name?" asked Miss Forcible. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

"I know not how to tell thee who I am," said Miss Spink to Miss Forcible.

Now, of course, this is just them quoting Shakespeare. But. Why these quotes specifically? They’re at the very least notable when discussing Coraline’s recurring theme of names. Especially the quote about the rose. It makes me think of what the cat said earlier, about how cats are sure of who they are so they don’t need names, about how Coraline didn’t need the cat’s name to be able to recognize it for who/what it was.

But, of course, this does not apply for humans. We need our names to be able to know ourselves, to be able to tell others who they are.

In chapter 6, Coraline wakes up and is disoriented. This disorientation is compared to the feeling one might experience upon being suddenly pulled out of a daydream. In this comparison, forgetting one’s name is equated with forgetting who one is and where one is.

Sometimes Coraline would forget who she was while she was daydreaming that she was exploring the Arctic, or the Amazon rainforest, or darkest Africa, and it was not until someone tapped her on the shoulder or said her name that Coraline would come back from a million miles away with a start, and all in the fraction of a second have to remember who she was, and what her name was, and that she was even there at all. Now there was the sun on her face, and she was Coraline Jones. Yes.

The ghost children have also forgotten their names, and with it most of who they were. In chapter 7, when Coraline is locked behind the mirror in the Other World, one of the ghost children says that names are the first things that one forgets after death.

"Who are you?" whispered Coraline. "Names, names, names," said another voice, all faraway and lost. "The names are the first thing to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names. I still keep pictures in my mind of my governess on some May morning, carrying my hoop and stick, and the morning sun behind her, and all the tulips bobbing in the breeze. But I have forgotten the name of my governess, and of the tulips too." "I don't think tulips have names," said Coraline. "They're just tulips." "Perhaps," said the voice sadly. "But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange-and-red, and red-and-orange-and-yellow, like the embers in the nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them."

The ghost children may have their memories, but they have largely forgotten who they were. They may remember their tulips, and certain strong memories, but there is very, very little left of them, and they have forgotten who they once were, they have forgotten their names.

"That is why we could not leave here, when we died. She kept us, and she fed on us, until now we're nothing left of ourselves, only snakeskins and spider-husks. Find our secret hearts, young mistress."

"She will take your life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll awake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten."

The Other Mother stole their hearts and their souls and their selves. She stole who they were away from them, their identities and names and the names of those they loved, leaving nothing in her wake.

The same ghost that talked about the tulips and the names of the tulips struggles to answer when Coraline asks their gender, as well, and when they do eventually give an answer they seem somewhat unsure of it, as shown by the word choice of “perhaps” and “I believe”

"A boy, perhaps, then," continued the one whose hand she was holding. "I believe I was once a boy." And it glowed a little more brightly in the darkness of the room behind the mirror.

(I personally take this quote, specifically it "glow[ing] a little more brightly" after coming to this conclusion, to mean either that the ghost is happy at realizing that he was once a boy, or even to mean that he has become somewhat more tangible upon this realization; upon remembering something about his self, and his identity.)

As an aside, it's noteworthy to me that we never learn the Other Mother’s true name. She is simply “The Other Mother” and “The Beldam.” Never is an actual name applied to her, only titles. We do not truly know who, or what, she is. Beings without names are shrouded in mystery (or should i say mist-ery). The ghost children are benevolent mysterious beings, the cat is an ambivalent-leaning-helpful mysterious being, and the other mother is a distinctly malevolent mysterious being.

"Who are you?" asked Coraline. "I'm your other mother," said the woman.

"She?" "The one who says she's your other mother," said the cat. "What is she?" asked Coraline. The cat did not answer, just padded through the pale mist beside Coraline.

But in conclusion, names in Coraline are extremely important. I’m sure there’s probably more that I'm missing, and feel free to add onto this, but basically—

People need names to know and remember who they are, and forgetting one’s name is the first step to losing the rest of who one is. Names humanize a person; with a name, they are less shrouded in mystery, more clear.

Knowing somebody's name helps one connect to and better understand that person; it is the first step in getting to know them and see them as a full person, the transition from “the crazy man upstairs” to “Mr Bobo”. Names, to people at least, are one of the fundamental building blocks of who we are.

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felix-lupin · 8 months

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I hate going to the dentist or the doctor's or whatever because every single time they're like

"And how often do you brush your teeth?"

And I'm really really bad at forming habits. Absolute garbage at it. It's really hard for me to start doing something and then maintain it as routine, and that's if I even REMEMBER to do it. IF I even remember, I still need to scrounge up the motivation to do it. I've never in my life been able to maintain a routine of brushing my teeth twice a fucking day, but there's been a few times where, with enough effort, I've been able to maintain a routine of once a day.

So I look at them, and I'm like, "I brush my teeth about once a day," and I'm proud of myself, a little, because I know it was really hard for me to get there, and once a day is better than nothing, right?

But they look at me, and every time they're like, "Well, you really should be brushing your teeth twice a day." And any amount of pride I might've had is gone, washed away and drowned out by shame, instead, because even my best isn't good enough. Even when I've managed to get something, they look at me and they're like "You should do more."

And they'll lecture me on it, tell me that once a day isn't enough. They'll tell me to at least try to brush my teeth twice a day, not once, and they'll present it like it's such a reasonable request. Like, this is the bare minimum, this isn't hard to do, it's easy, you should at least try to do it.

And because the shame is too much, and I don't want to look like I'm not trying, because I AM, I'm trying my best, and I don't want to say no because then it'll look like I'm just lazy, not willing to put in the effort. So I'll say okay, and I'll agree. And when I go home, I brush my teeth and maybe I'll brush my teeth twice a day for two or three days, and then I'll miss it. It's too emotionally/slash mentally draining to keep up the habit, or I didn't have the time, or some other reason, but I'll miss it.

And then, instead of being able to go back to brushing my teeth once a day, keeping that small, basic thing so that I have at least some upkeep on my teeth, I feel so much shame and dejection, I feel like such a useless failure, that I just.. Stop. I stop doing even that basic upkeep. I don't brush my teeth for fucking months, until it gets bad enough that they start to hurt and even then I'm like, why should I even try to get back into the habit? It's not worth it. It's not enough. It'll never be enough.

My best will never be enough for those people. I'll brush my teeth once a day, and they'll say, well, it should really be twice a day, as if I don't already know. I'll clean a small portion of my room, organize my desk or take out the trash or clean the closet, and they'll say, well, you should really clean the whole thing. I'll walk for twenty or thirty minutes while my legs hurt nearly the whole time, and then it gets bad enough I have to sit down, and they'll say, well, you really shouldn't sit here or you're wasting time or come on, it's not even that long, you should be able to walk for this long. or you're being dramatic, just believe in yourself!

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of my needs being dismissed, my best efforts being dismissed as not good enough when it's so hard for me to do that much. I hate it, and I hate how even though I know that I'm trying my goddamn best I can't fully erase the shame, not truly. It sits in the back of my brain like a parasite, eating away at my motivation to do things, to try my best. Consuming it until the shame just crushes and paralyzes me, and then I can't get myself to do anything like that at all, can't even try to put in the bare minimum, let alone my best. Because my best isn't good enough, will never be good enough, and it'll never get rid of the shame.

#felix's posts #felixlupin.txt #vent post #ok to reblog #ableism #autism #adhd #neurodivergent #executive dysfunction #We're not even gonna get into the physical stuff that makes it hard to perform tasks rn #Shame is awful and it is not a productive emotion the ONLY thing shame does #is make you HATE yourself and discourage you from ever trying again #FUCK shame.#fuck ableism #this post is brought to you by #the dentist appointment i had today mixed with my past experiences ive had with dentists</3 #I'm trying so hard not to care #and to keep doing these things and taking care of myself #but its so fucking hard when everyone tells you it isnt enough.#its so hard to be your own biggest cheerleader. to keep trying to encourage yourself #and ignore the people that tell you that you aren't enough.#Its so hard to be an optimist. To constantly try to look on the bright side and be proud of your efforts #Its so fucking hard to love yourself. I'm trying but it's so fucking hard

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