Blog 3.5: Revision of the Coraline

Coraline Jones is the heroine in the novel Coraline, written by Neil Gaiman. Coraline moves to a new house with her parents where she discovers a different world and encounters  some creatures which are a replica of the people in her real world particularly her parents and her neighbors. From the beginning to the end of this story, Coraline Jones represents the most archetypal character since she discovers the new world and has to overcome some serious dangers in a heroic and courageous way.  She rescues her parents and some other children trapped by her other mother. Even though the story takes place in a magical world, there are elements that relate to real life characters. Coraline is indeed a heroine in this story because she takes risks and faces death in order to save her parents. In the journey towards exploration, she learns to value what she has in life and becomes a different, more mature person.

            In a movie we usually see that there is always an individual character who shows his/her intelligence or fearless personality and becomes a hero/heroine. In Coraline we see a young girl who is an explorer who embarks on a dangerous journey and succeeds by using her intelligence. By focusing on her attitudes, we can clearly say that she is a courageous person who wants to explore the unknown world, even though that desire to explore could get her to a serious problem. When her neighbors, an old lady named Miss Spink and Miss Forcible read her fortune through tea leaves and tell her that she could be in danger, Coraline didn’t show any sign of being   afraid of this warning, and she still wanted to see what happens next in her life. She asks “what am I in danger.”  (p20) Her curious and courageous nature leads her to face the unknown without fear.

Moreover, we see Coraline as a curious person in another conversation with an old man upstairs who warns her that his mice told him not to go through the door which has been bricked up. However, Coraline didn’t stop imagining about the window and her curiosity led her to wonder even more about it. She asks herself why am I in danger? Why have they told me not to go through the brick window? She is an individual who does not always believe what she is told until she sees it for herself. She becomes intrigued by the unexpected sounds that eventually lead her to go through the brick wall which is really a link to another universe. Her journey through this magical but frightening world will test her as an individual and she will come out victorious due to her heroism and intelligence.

                      Sometimes I think it would be impossible for me to do what Coraline does for her parents and for other three innocent ghost children. She faces death, but she is fearless and fights back and rescues her parents and releases the three children.  She shows her intelligence and cleverness by playing a game with her other mother. She says that if she can’t find her real parents, she would give in to the other mother and allow buttons to be sewn up into her eyes, but if she wins the game, the other mother would let everyone go free. Once Coraline is trapped behind the mirror where those three children were kept by the other mother, she makes some plans to escape. The three children told her that the other mother trapped them there and is slowly taking their lives away. They have no hands, no eyes and no heads. They have been eaten by the other mother and they told Coraline to flee; otherwise the same would happen to her. However, Coraline is a courageous hero and she fights with her other mother and manages to escape. Then she locks the door to the other world forever, but the other mother’s right hand comes out to Coraline’s world to get the key to the brick door. However, because of   Coraline’s intelligence, she can’t succeed in her mission and Coraline cast the other mother’s hand into the well.

In the story Coraline, the young girl Coraline Jones is the primary character, who goes through a heroic journey and finds herself in an unknown world which is a replica of her real world. In this strange universe she faces dangers and even death. However, Coraline Jones never strays from her mission, which is to rescue her parents from an evil witch who tries to trap Coraline in her strange world where she has already trapped some other children and is slowly taking their lives away. Coraline doesn’t let her other mother succeed in her mission and she heroically rescues her parents and releases the children by playing a game and using her intelligence and wit. She also undergoes significant changes because of her experience and opens her eyes to a new reality. She learns to accept the life she has been given even though she cannot always get what she wants. Her heroic journey through an alternative universe also makes her find herself and value what she has.

FINAL ESSAY

This class was my last class in this college and it was one of my favorite classes which is done well. When I registered this class, I was so much worried by knowing that the course going to be deal with the idea of supernatural where there will be discussion of fairies, devils and evils or vampires and I was unaware about supernatural things until I attended couple of classes and was gaining and gathering with all the new ideas and information presented by the Professor and other students. There are a lot of things that I have learned in this class. I have learned about the meaning of symbols, archetype and monotheistic structures which I was quite innocent about before this class. Now I am able to find symbol on any type of structure and able to understand the deeper meaning of it.

Through the poem “Goblin market”   I have developed my ideas and knowledge about the meaning of symbol and able to recognize the archetype on it. When I was read this poem, I wasn’t sure what to do and how to explain about it in easy because it was my first attempt to read a poem and understand the meaning and find the important symbol. After looked on other student’s blog entries and comparing with my understanding I read again and again until I got the meaning of this poem. I think this class was very helpful for me that was mostly based on web blog because I had a chance to look others blog entries to read them and gain ideas. Now I have different feelings about songs and poem that I never had before.

There was another interesting part in this class when we started reading the book Coralline and we started write about it. We went through every chapter of this book and discussed about it on the blog. While reading this book we gathered with the symbols, archetype, monotheistic structure and setting which gave me the strength to find my own archetype where I found my archetype is as wanderer and explorer. I have learned how to find archetype of other people from any kind of fiction story, poem or movie.         

During the presentation I was so much interested into other student’s presentation about their project. They all have done a good job on their presentation. For the project I choose a movie and presented in class. Through the presentation I think I have passed my nervousness and my weakness because I never had done any presentation before like this. First day of the presentation I didn’t do my presentation because I waited to see other student’s presentation and learned from them a lot.

From my classmates project I choose “Joseph Money Maker" project as my favorite. The reason I choose this because he presented an in strength appear at an ancient Brazilian martial arts which is called "Capoeira". Joseph has been learning martial arts for long long time. I enjoyed his writing and presenting for such a challenging project. I am inspired by Joseph and I would like to learn martial arts. I would like to dig more information about martial arts. There were so many things that I learned from this class and the way prof. taught us so many things in good manner and they were very interesting.  

4.3: The Omen (Research Blog)

                One of the oldest ideas in the history of the human race is the idea of the devil or the fallen angel that opposes God and tries to doom humanity. This frightening idea appears in all monotheistic religions, and it can even be found in pagan cultures across the world. The movie The Omen directed by Richard Donner deals with this concept of supernatural evil and how it plays an important role in the development of world events. After analyzing the main plot of this movie, I realize there are similarities between the story of the omen and the Christian story of Christ. The movie deals with the idea of the devil child or antichrist that opposes Christianity and dooms humanity through deception. This movie focuses on the symbolic meaning of this frightening character which still holds such a strong grip on the minds of so many people even in the modern world.

The story of the omen begins with a wealthy married couple named Robert and Katherine Thorn who live an ideal life except that they do not have any children, and they want desperately to have a child. Robert Thorn is the U.S. ambassador to Italy and he and his wife try to have a baby, but the child dies in childbirth. At that moment, a mysterious priest approaches Robert and suggests to him that he should just take another baby whose mother had died giving birth. Robert listens to the priest and without telling his wife, takes the child from the hospital. The couple names the child Damien and continues having a normal life.  However, as time goes by it becomes clear that Damien is not an ordinary child because a series of strange deaths begin to happen. First, the child’s nanny hangs herself on the boy’s birthday and a new nanny arrives to take care of the boy. Later the priest is killed by a lightning rod in a freak accident, and Katherine loses her second child when Damien pushes her off the balcony of their home. In order to find more information about the child’s background, Robert and a photographer named Keith  travel from England to Rome, and then to Israel where Keith is decapitated by a pane of glass. Back in England Katherine is also killed by the new nanny, and Robert finally realizes that Damien is the antichrist or the devil’s child that has been born to doom the human race. In Israel, Robert finds an archaeologist who tells him that the only way to kill the child is by stabbing him with the seven daggers of Megiddo. Robert tries to kill Damien in a church after discovering that the boy has the devil’s number of three sixes as a birthmark, but Robert is shot by police before he can finish his task and save the human race. Damien is then adopted by the president of the United States who is a friend of Robert’s, and this makes the devil child smile because he is now in a position of power where he can perform his mission of deceiving humanity and sending us all to hell.

Damien is the child that represents the most frightening apocalyptic prophecy of the end of time. In the Christian religion the coming of the Antichrist is one of the last signs or omens indicating that the end of the world is near. In other words, this evil character is the archetype of doom, a false messiah that will contradict the teachings of Christ and deceive humanity and make us sin so we can lose our souls to the devil. Therefore, while Christ is considered the son of God who came to the world to atone for our sins and die for our salvation out of love for the human race, the antichrist is the son of the devil who comes to the world to fulfill his mission which is to condemn people to eternal damnation. According to religious historian Sabina Flanagan, in the Christian apocalyptic view “the end of the world would be heralded by various disasters, natural and social, the penultimate one of which would be the arrival of the Antichrist” (59). Therefore, Damien is evil incarnate and this is why he is always protected by supernatural forces, that mysteriously lead to the deaths of people who try to find the truth of his origin. As a child, he needs protection so he can be placed in a position where he can do the most damage. This is finally achieved when he is adopted by the president of the most powerful nation on earth. From this position he can influence public policy “lead a terrible persecution of the church,” (Flanagan, 59) and even bring about a world war that will end the human race. This is why Damien smiles at the end of the movie because he knows his demonic work is about to begin.

The movie the Omen hints at the idea of the devil playing a role in human affairs so it is useful to analyze this concept of the devil before we can fully understand how it relates to the anti-Christ. The Devil is perhaps the oldest archetype of evil that has existed even in ancient civilizations. The idea that this being represents the dark forces of the universe is essential to the teachings of the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, but other pagan cultures believed in this supernatural being as well. For Instance the atheist scholar Robert Ingersoll claims that

“We obtain our Devil from the Jews, and they got him from Babylon. The Jews cultivated the science of Demonology, and at one time it was believed that there were nine kinds of demons: Beelzebub, prince of the false gods of the other nations; the Pythian Apollo, prince of liars; Belial, prince of mischief makers. Asmodeus, prince of revengeful devils; Satan, prince of witches and magicians; Meresin, prince of aerial devils, who caused thunderstorms and plagues; Abandon, who caused wars, tumults and combustions; Diabolous, who drives to despair, and Mammon, prince of the tempters.”

Christianity then adopted the Jewish idea of the devil. This is suggested in the movie when Damien’s father travels to Rome, the site of the Catholic Church and to Israel, the birthplace of Judaism to search for Damien’s true origins. The Devil is also a major player in the Christian sacred book. As Ingersoll tells us, “The New Testament is far more explicit than the old…Certainly the writers of the New Testament believed in the existence of the Devil.” Therefore, the idea of the Devil is important to understand Damien’s mission on earth. Just like Christ was sent to earth by his Father to save souls, so was Damien sent to earth to doom them and do the Devil’s work. The claim that Damien was the son of the devil is supported by the bible “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44).Biblical scholar Steve Hall also believes that “His (Damien) real power comes from Satan (the Devil) himself.”Damien or as he is often called in the sacred texts, “the son of perdition.” Who came to the world to do his father’s work which is to doom our souls and send them to hell for eternity, and he will do this by using one weapon, deception.

            As a matter of fact, in the movie the idea of Damien’s deceptive nature is already seen in how he is presented to the viewers. He appears to be a normal innocent well-behaved child who might even seem cute. He is born into a stable well respected family and grows up without any major traumas such as being the victim of abusive parents. During the first years of his childhood there is no indication of him participating in any act of delinquency or cruelty.  He only shows his true identity when his mother threatens his position of privilege by expecting another baby. That is when Damien decides to throw her over the balcony and kill her true legitimate child. Damien’s deception is so perfect that no one suspects him to be evil. Even after his father finds out the truth about his origin and is told to kill the boy, he refuses to do so because he is only a child and Damien is his only son. It is only after Robert Thorn discovers the sign of the devil on Damien’s skin that he decides to kill this supernatural being disguised as a human infant. This is the true nature of the Anti-Christ, to fool people into believing he is normal and even good, so that they can follow him instead of Christ. Damien even fools the president of the United States who adopts him and will raise him as if he were his own child. As Hall claims, “He uses intrigue and his apparently peaceful intentions” and “most of the people of the world will be amazed by him, follow him, and even worship him”. Then “his power will seem to be worldwide.” Damien has succeeded in deceiving people and in the end of the movie he is very close to achieving power worldwide just like he was intended to do by his true father, the devil.

           

                 The major symbol in the movie is the triple six birthmarks found on Damien’s head which identify  him without a doubt as the supernatural anti-Christ. This number has a biblical tradition and it can be found to refer to the man sent by the Devil to complete his mission on earth. In the Christian bible the Antichrist is referred to as a leader that will come at the end of time sitting at the head of a beast. The bible says “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a  man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.” (Rev. 13:18). Although there have been many interpretations of this number, it is generally believed to refer to the man who will be born to deceive humanity and oppose the teachings of the Christian God. Damien then is the one who will come to earth riding on an enormous beast after his mission is accomplished.

           

                 Throughout history many people from the roman emperor Nero to the Nazi leader Hitler have been identified as the Antichrist. Even the philosopher Nietzsche gave himself that title in one of his books that criticize the values of Christianity. Many people today still believe that the Antichrist will come or it is already among us. The movie the Omen gives a clear portrayal of how the Antichrist will come to earth, not as an evil spirit with a hideous face, but as a powerful deceiver who will fool people into believing that evil is superior to what is moral and good. Regardless of whether one believes in this prophecy or not, it is amazing to know how ancient people used supernatural explanations for their human fears of the natural world. Evil does exist on earth and as long as this is true, the image of Damien as the Antichrist will always be the archetype for the darkest side of humanity. In the end, it is up to us to decide if good will prevail or if “The son of perdition” will triumph in the world.

                                                                   

Works Cited

Flanagan, Sabina. “Twelfth-Century Apocalyptic Imaginations and the Coming of the Antichrist.”

The Journal of Religious History. 24.1 (2000): 57-60 Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

Hall, Steve. “The Antichrist.” Abounding Joy. Dec. 2004. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

Ingersoll, Robert. G. “The Devil.” The Secular Web. 1899. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

New Jerusalem Bible, John. 8:44. Rev. 13:18.

The Omen. Dir. Richard Donner. Prof. Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, and David Warner. Twenty Century Fox Productions, 1976. Film.

Blog Entry 4.2: Project Update 2

The Introduction and The Plot   

One of the oldest ideas in the history of the human race is the idea of the devil or the fallen angel that opposes God and tries to doom humanity. This frightening idea appears in all monotheistic religions, and it can even be found in pagan cultures across the world. The movie The Omen directed by Richard Donner deals with this concept of supernatural evil and how it plays an important role in the development of world events. After analyzing the main plot of this movie, I realize there are similarities between the story of the omen and the Christian story of Christ. The movie deals with the idea of the devil child or antichrist that opposes Christianity and dooms humanity through deception. This movie focuses on the symbolic meaning of this frightening character which still holds such a strong grip on the minds of so many people even in the modern world.

The story of the Omen begins with wealthy married couple named Robert and Katherine Thorn who live an ideal except that they do not have any children and they desperately to have a child, Robert Thorn is the U.S. ambassador to Italy and he and his wife try to have a baby, but the child dies in during the birth. At the moment a mysterious priest approaches Robert and suggests him that he should just take another baby whose mother had died while giving him birth. Robert listens to the priest and without telling his wife, takes the child from the hospital. The couple named the child Damien and who is not a ordinary child because a series of strange death begin to happen.  First the child’s nanny hangs herself on the boy’s birthday and a new nanny arrives to take care of him. Later the priest is killed by a lightening rod in a freak accident, and Katherine loses her second child when Damien pushes her and falls down from the balcony of their home. In order to find more information about the child background, Robert and a photographer named heath travel from England to Rome, and then to Israel when the photographer is decapitated by a pane of glass. Back in England Katherine is also killed by the new nanny, and Robert family realizes that Damien is the antichrist or the devil’s child that has been born to doom the human race. In Israel Robert finds an archeologist who tells him the only way to kill the child is by stabbing him with the seven daggers of Megiddo. Robert tries to kill Damien in a church after discovering that the boy has the devil’s number of three sixes as birthmark but Robert is shot by police before he can finish his task and save the human race. Damien is the adopted by the president of the United States who is a friend of Robert and that makes the devil child smile because he is now in a position of power where he can perform his mission of deceiving humanity and sending us all to hell.