When Love Isn’t Enough: God in Coraline

If this article has reached you, I can be almost a hundred percent sure that you have heard about the power of love before. A lot of stories tout it. As a child, it came in the form of the power of friendship, with shows like the Care Bears and My Little Pony. Disney movies liked to promote the romantic side, but this only blossomed into Hallmark and Lifetime movies. Even some of the stories I’ve touched on emphasize it. The love of community, in The Martian. The love of missionaries and evangelists in 9. Or the greatest love in Life. But what about when love just isn’t enough? The children’s horror, Coraline, is a gentle and compassionate exploration of what happens when love isn’t enough. 

The harsh reality of life is that sometimes, the people who love us deeply will fail us. Every person has their own sins and struggles to face, and some of them will lose them. It may be spousal abuse. A parent with an alcohol addiction. Maybe a child who seems to have chosen drugs over their own family. All too often people who have lived through these tragedies with question the love of the one who betrayed them. They may even believe they are unlovable. But while love is indeed a powerful thing, the truth is that human love is also fallen.

Mockaries and Others. 

Coraline is a truly creepy children’s story that haunts even many adults who have read or watched it. The Laika Studios adaptation is incredibly well done and close enough that you can follow along even if you have not read Neil Gaimon’s book. I do, however, suggest you read the book if you are able. The author himself may be someone you don’t want to support right now, but remember that many libraries need the support too. Libraries are incredible.

We first come apon Coraline after a move into an ancient house now turned into a multi-level apartment. It is called The Pink Palace and seems like it should be a delight. Instead, we see that Coraline is not very well stimulated in her life. Her parents seem constantly distracted and Coraline struggles to fit in with the childless, and rather odd, neighbors. As she wanders around, exploring her new world, she finds a small door that has been long since bricked up.

As Coraline sleeps, however, this door opens and Coraline is able to crawl through a truly terrifying tunnel into a mirror world. In this mirror world, Coraline meets her “other parents”, replicas of her real-life parents with button eyes and an eery amount of attentiveness. Overall, the world the Other Mother created is much more engaging with treats and circuses and many tempting delights for children. In the book, Coraline is very quick to get suspicious. When the Other Mother asks her to exchange her eyes for buttons in order to stay in the magical world the Beldam has created, Coraline wants to escape as soon as possible. Thanks to talismans given to her in the real world, Coraline is able to escape the terrifying “Other mother”, a terrifying, child-consuming demon called “the Beldam.”

Coraline’s escape is not complete, though. With the door open, the Other Mother was able to kidnap her parents and trap them in the Other world. Making herself overcome her fear, Coraline returns to the Other world. Together with a black cat who is able to pass through both worlds and the ghosts of previously trapped children, Coraline is able to find her parents and free the captured souls.

It would have seemed, in the end, that she had escaped. However, the Beldam was able to dislocate her hand and send it into the real world to find the key. Again, Coraline must work up the courage to trick the hand, luring it by pretending to have a picnic. When the hand attacks in an attempt to steal the key, Coraline traps it in the blanket and throws it into a deep well.

The Love of the Others

The creepiness of the book comes from many aspects. There are rats with terrifying multi-voiced songs that seem to hint at being supernatural devourers of life. The ghosts are terrifying in their own right, mostly because of the implications they create. The tunnel itself seems filled with an ancient, watchful evil that even the Beldam will not approach. And of course, the Beldam herself is also pretty terrifying.

By far, the most terrifying thing about the book is the interactions Coraline has with the “others” in the world. Some of the Other characters are genuinely evil, especially as the world starts to break down. One of the Other characters that is both sad and horrifying is the Other Father. As everything in the mirror world is created by the Beldam, like a spider web, even the Other Characters should have been no more than puppets. Some of them, however, have a life of their own. While the rats and other entities do seem to lay under the surface of some, the Other Father, and in the movie, Wybie, seem to have a shadow of her own family. More importantly, of their love.

In the movie, the character Wybie is Coraline’s real-life friend. Unfortunately, he also seems to be the subject of her disdain and bullying at first. The Other Wybie is a special focus of the Beldam’s cruelty. The mute character seems sorrowful to be trapped in his role. Though he wants to help her, he is literally a puppet of the evil trying to trap her. The more he tries, the more he suffers. His smile is sewn in place and eventually, he is altogether unraveled for his role in Coraline’s escape.

There is no Wybie in the book. The most horrifying scene, however, focuses on the Other Father. He displays the same reticence, with the Other Mother often stepping in to actively “puppet” him with physical means. While the movie shows this some, the book takes it to a whole different level. One of the talismans Coraline must find in order to escape is guarded by the puppet father. When we see him after the Other World starts to disintegrate, the Other Father is a fetid, rotting, fleshy mass. While he himself is horrifying, and actively attacks Coraline, the Other Father cries out to Coraline to escape. He begs her to forgive him, telling her how sorry he is, and how he doesn’t want to harm her. He even gives her some verbal aid.

We even hear from the ghost children and the cat that the Beldam herself genuinely loves Coraline, and wants to be loved by her. Yes, she is a cruel monster that will consume Coraline. But her motivation is, at least in a large part, love.

The monsters in Coraline are monsters that love her. That love is not enough to save her. In fact, it’s love that she needs to save herself from.

Violent Love. 

Love is a powerful force. However, love is not enough. Just because love itself is a powerful good, doesn’t mean its enough to move brokenness and sin. I have worked with so many abused children. Sometimes I have worked directly with the families of those abused kids. It was such a struggle for me to keep a proper perspective when I saw the love the children had for their parents and the parents for the children. Two things can both be true. It can be true that a parent deeply loves their child and that they are abusing them. An abused child can truly love their parent and still need to be separated from them.

One of my dear friends had a mother who was an active alcoholic throughout her childhood, with horrible repercussions for her family. When her mother passed away it was hard for me to be comfortable with her comparing her grief with mine for my mother. My mother was, after all, a truly amazing mother. But my friend’s grief and love for her alcoholic mother was not any less. Nor was her mother’s love. Her mother didn’t love alcohol more than her child. Her love was just not strong enough to fight her sin.

Having experienced an abusive relationship, and having experienced the sexual infidelity of men who claimed to love me and only me, it’s hard for me to come to terms with how that love could be false. My mind wants to either tell me that their love was never true, or it wouldn’t have left. It would have been strong enough to keep them from causing me pain. Is it, then, that I am not worthy of love? But I cannot dismiss the love of my past partners and claim it was not real. And I cannot say that I am not worth love. It can be true that they loved me, and yet they were not strong enough to save me from themselves. And just because my love wasn’t “strong enough to save them” doesn’t mean that I didn’t love them.

The Only True Love

Human love is sadly broken and weak. We are made in God’s image, and God is love. Love is, in many ways, one of the best things about ourselves. Just like in Coraline, Wybie and the Other Father, and even the Beldam were created in the image of her real parents and friends. Because of that, even in the mirror world where everything is occupied by evil and fallen, that love still exists. It’s just not able to rescue the object of the love.

It is often love itself that needs to be rescued. Unfortunately for us, we cannot rescue it. It is not in our image, it is in God’s. We cannot save people we love from themselves. They must choose to change.

There is someone who can reach in and save those we love who are broken.

The Bible fully admits that love itself is powerful. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, we are told that three things will last forever. Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is love. Despite that, we are reminded that love in and of itself is not the most powerful thing. In Luke 6:32 we are told that love for those you love is of no credit to the lover. “For even sinners love those who love them:”

It is only God’s love that is truly strong enough to save. Romans 5:8 says “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We are also shown that identifying ourselves by that love is what will allow us to actually overcome the evil in and around us. 1 John 4:16 and 17 states “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.”

Let us then remember the only love that can save both us and those around us. Let the love of God transform us, because no other lobe is enough.

Join me next week to look at the Sci-fi horror Caddo Lake.