Coraline and Freud's "Unheimliche"

Sigmund Freud

Neil Gaiman's Coraline is a novel that makes excellent use of Sigmund Freud's concept unheimliche, or uncanny, to bring an extra dimension of psychological tension and fear to the narrative. For this reason, I believe it is more than a children's book. It is actually quite sophisticated.


Unheimliche, and its counterpart, heimliche, are German terms that most closely translate to mean unhomely and homely. More loosely they translate to uncanny and canny. Something comfortable and familiar is heimliche. On the other hand, unheimliche is essentially an instance where something is familiar, yet foreign at the same time.


I've heard it best explained using zombies (I'm a huge zombie genre fan, so as a general rule I think everything is better with zombies).


When you walk into your grandma's kitchen and she is baking cookies and it smells, looks and feels familiar, then this is heimliche. . .But when you walk into your grandmother's kitchen and there are fresh-baked cookies that smell familiar and you find your grandmother is still your grandmother (sort of), but she is a zombie that wants to eat you, this is unheimliche! 


Because the setting and the scene are familiar, yet foreign, there is an extra level of cognitive dissonance. Basically, you'd be attracted and repulsed at the same time. You still love your grandmother, but you better either run or take care of zombie grandma with a blunt object or you're zombie food. (On another little side note, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic book series quite often makes use of the unheimliche exactly as I have just described).


Gaiman uses this cognitive dissonance to add an extra level to Coraline, and it's a theme that is explored throughout the novel. Coraline's house, neighbors and family on the other side of the door are familiar, yet foreign at the same time.  Coraline is at first attracted to them, but then repulsed because of the foreignness. 


Coraline's "other mother" is extra creepy because she is like Coraline's mother, but different, black button eyes and all. She "loves" Coraline, as a mother would do, but she wants her as a possession. The way she "loves" Coraline is not how we would hope a mother would "love." 


It's not until Coraline is able to rid herself of the danger of the "other mother" that the tension in the novel is resolved. The cognitive dissonance represented by the "other mother" dissipates and the narrative resolves itself with Coraline back in her familiar setting, but with her lesson learned.


Gaiman's use of Freudian concepts in Coraline elevates it beyond a basic children's book or horror novel, giving it a touch of sophistication. This is just one more example of how "popular," "children's" or "genre" literature can be more sophisticated than it is given credit for.