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Mystery In Coraline By Neil Gaiman

Decent Essays

In these paragraphs I will show how the author of Coraline, Neil Gaiman, creates mystery. I will do this by providing various quotes and analysing them.

Neil Gaiman creates mystery in the quote “There was a cold, musty smell coming from the open doorway, it smelled like something very old and very slow” by making us want to know what this smell. Also mystery is created in this passage with the adjective “cold” this links to mystery as in most ghost films and books, whenever a ghost (or an undead creature is present) it always get’s a little bit colder. This is mysterious as this makes us think if this scent is coming from the dead. Another interpretation is from the adjective “musty” this word means old or antique, and it is unusual as we …show more content…

An example of him withholding information is in the noun “something” this word infers absolutely nothing, and this creates mystery as we want to find out what this creature is. Is it a good creature? Or not? Another way he uses mystery is by using eerie adjectives such as “black.” This might be a very basic adjective but, if it is black it is hiding something from us as in all movies villains normally wear black, and this automatically makes us loathe this creature as we presume that it is evil. Neil continues to use verbs, especially dynamic verb such as “scurried” in comparison to other words scurried is a relatively fast word which implies that this creature is either hiding from Coraline because it’s scared or hiding from Coraline because it doesn’t want her to properly see her. The way Neil phrases this sentences it makes us think that if this creature disappears so easily it might be used to it and no-one could’ve ever seen this creature. Another mysterious dynamic verb is “vanished” this is mysterious as we want to know where this creature disappeared off to and why it appeared and then disappeared so quickly, what was the point of …show more content…

Firstly Neil uses the reflexive pronoun “We” this implies that no matter how small these creatures are there are a lot of them, it’s almost as if they have an army. He also uses the modal verb “will” and this creates suspense as they are guaranteeing that Coraline will fall and that they will witness, this makes us ask if these creatures have supernatural abilities. The word “here” implies that these creatures could know where she will fall and they aren’t telling her so that she will follow them. Could they be spies from the other mother? Another interpretation is for the pronoun “you.” You might be thinking that this doesn’t mean anything, however this could specify to Coraline, meaning that they have been watching her and they know everything about her… And lastly mystery is caused using the dynamic verb “fall” this is mysterious as these creatures are telling her when she will die, and in a way they are threatening her. This is mysterious as we want to know why all of this is happening to Coraline and not any other

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