3.5 Coraline

Lucero Vazquez

Eng 102

                                                      Archetypes

       According to Carol Pearson, who is a psychologist she identifies that all of us have an archetype that is original to our personality. This helps us to interact with the real world and interpret it. Such as when we see children with out a home or parents we are looking at the orphan archetype.

        One of many archetypes is the explorer archetype; it’s the type of person who has the tenacity and spirit of having freedom. For example, in the book called Coraline by Neil Gaiman, the protagonist named Coraline goes through many events such as her curiosity to explore the new house cause her to find a new world and gets trapped into a drawing room or known as the other side. Now she has to find the way to go back home and find her real parents that were trapped in a mirror. To give a more detail of what happens in the story is when her parents decide to move to a new house. But there is something strange with the house because they are mysterious sounds and shadows. The first day Coraline meets her neighbors who live in the same house and finds them quite strange. Her neighbors prevent her from danger, such as Miss Forcible and Miss Spink who read her the tea leaves both told her that she was in danger. Also, the old man told her that the mice had a message for her, “Don’t go through the door” (Gaiman 16). Caroline does not pay attention to them and keeps exploring the house and finds a door that was made of brick. Her parents had told her that she is not suppose to entry to the door, the door is known as the other side. From this point she keeps exploring because her parents are so busy working in the computer that they do not pay attention to her.

       Another example is the orphan archetype, it’s the type of person who independent and finds the way to survive in the real world.  One day, Coraline mother goes to the supermarket and she decides to keep exploring and finds the other side. Where she discovers her other parents and her other neighbors but with the exception that they have button eyes.

      Finally, she experienced the innocent archetype which is my archetype. We are the type of person who has trust, faith and optimism. The negative side is that we tend to believe that everybody is good and we can trust them. Just like Coraline trust her other parents at the beginning of the story where they made Coraline believe that they care about her and they want her as a daughter.

       As I said we all have an archetype and we might have a strong one. If we get to know about our archetype it gives us knowledge of who we are and try to understand others. Also, we understand better what the authors are tying to expressed in their writing such as Neil Gaiman is trying to express in his writing.