Horror/Sci-fi/fantasy Literature

For this weeks reading, I dove into the world of Coraline, Gaiman's short fantastical novel. Within this story Gaiman explores major elements revolving around dreams and dream sequences, a theme commonly found in mythic reading. Majorly, there is the portal which transports Coraline into the world of "dreams" where she finds other personas of her family and friends around her. A very prominent and important character that follows Coraline along her journey and aids in assistance in her understanding, is her feline friend, the cat. This character archetype is seen many times before, one example being C.S. Lewis's cheshire cat. Which also derives from mythological animal characters, helping the protagonist in their journey or battle. Of course, the other mother is a very iconic mythic and fairytale archetype seen as the step mother. At first appealing as an even better version of Coraline's mother, but soon is revealed to be an evil entity trying to posses Coralin

J.R.R Tolken is one of the modern masters of the heroic journey and its construction. His saga of The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest fantastical hero adventures in the recent time, following a character arch that is dynamic and ever growing. Tolken's novel, The Hobbit also follows the pattern of a hero during his journey very closely. As the tale begins, it shows the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, our main character, as an unsuspecting, non heroic individual living a quiet life. Once the story progresses, we come to find Bilbo following the patterns closely related to the "pattern of a hero". Such as, when he is bestowed with the task of burglar for the group of dwarves, and first refuses the task but there after chooses to go along on the journey. This is seen as the refusal to adventure at first but then leads to the crossing of the threshold of the adventure, thus beginning the many challenges and obstacles the hero must face and conquer. Bilbo faces many along the wa

Witches in literature, and frankly all form of the arts, are one of my favorite subjects. As spoken about in class, witches form a "new" role for women in horror as the dominating or powerful being within the story. Females in the horror genre went from posing as the damsel in distress to the over ruler as a witch. Akata Witch illustrates a few different "species" of witches within the same magical community/ world. The characters are taken from archetypes that have been around in many stories past. Such as the main character, Sunny, being a "chosen one" of the leopard people and her comrades. This novel also depicts strong women in power and their roles in a dominantly female community.