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  • Essay / Analysis of “Coraline” through psychoanalytic theories

    Coraline was written in 2002 by an English author named Neil Gaiman. Although this short story is a children's book, one cannot help but see a darker side of children's literature and thus one can explore a psychological approach to this story and spark an interest in a postmodern gothic genre, and begin to look for the aspects that make this story a children's book. such a “strange” book. The special affinity between these disciplines and children's literature owes much to the ancient tradition of using stories to help children understand themselves and those around them. Psychoanalytic stories that can address children's fears, anxieties, angry reactions, and "naughtiness", but which can also offer advice on how to deal with them, can help the reader in psychoanalysis. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay “There was nothing here that scared him. These things – even the one in the basement – ​​were illusions, things made up by the other mother in a horrible parody of the real people and real things down the hall. There was really nothing she could do, Coraline decided. She could only twist, copy and distort things that already existed. This implies that the other world Coraline sees through the portal is not a reality; it's just a "horrible parody" or a scary replica of the real world. The concept of the uncanny has been studied by many prominent names, including Sigmund Freud. The “uncanny”: In terms of Freudian terminology, this concept is derived from a German word, “unheimlich,” which literally translates to “frightening, strange, or inhospitable.” One way to describe this is that the phrase is "oddly familiar." So, to clarify, when one recognizes the setting but has a feeling of something unusual and unfamiliar, then one experiences a feeling of “strangeness.” If we think about the literal translation of "unheimlich", "strangeness" should refer to things that are frightening because they are unfamiliar to us. Freud, on the other hand, divides the meaning of strangeness into two categories: “on the one hand, it means that which is familiar and pleasant, and on the other hand, that which is hidden and kept out of sight.” Thus, the meaning of “heimlich” slowly presents an uncertainty which then changes the meaning to an opposite meaning, unheimlich. In response to this, both paths end up leading to the same result: “strangeness is that class of the terrifying which brings us back to something that has been known to us for a long time, once very familiar”. In The Strangeness of Freud and his Reading of The Sandman (1816) by ETA Hoffman, he focuses on the eyes. He states that the loss of eyes is the main contributing factor to making a story "strange", because the eyes represent a person's identity. Freud then goes further and introduces the idea of ​​a double, of having a double of you. However, when we confront our double, as an adult, this double creates a feeling of strangeness. However, the feeling of "strangeness" evoked by the doppelganger may also be due to extreme self-esteem, a "superego", an idea that Freud explored in depth. A “superego” symbolizes the most idealistic, unrealistic and utopian dreams and the wildest fantasies, and as a result, the idea of ​​having a double becomes unacceptable because it hurts the ego. Thus, “strangeness” is anything that one experiences as an adult that is vaguely reminiscent of one's early psychic stages, in terms of castration and doubles. Keep in mind: this is just a sample.2