Why Buttons???

[Sandi]

Other than the creepy factor, why is it that everyone in the Other Mother's world has buttons sewn over their eyes?

[Elizabeth]

They symbolize that the happiness the Other Mother is offering in her world isn't quite real - you have to close your eyes to your old life to make yourself feel it, if that makes sense. Really, I guess Neil Gaiman could have chosen anything that was covering the eyes (bandaids, maybe? ;]), but buttons are especially creepy...they just make everyone in the Other Mother's world seem like an evil doll, don't they?

[Sandi]

I was thinking that maybe it had to do with the burial custom in many cultures of placing coins over the eyes of the dead.

[Vivian]

Haven't you ever seen stuffed animals/dolls with buttons for eyes? The "Other Mother" is a soulless doll.

[Liz]

I like Sandi's idea - the mirroring of the coin concept from burial rituals. To stay with the other mother permanently, Coraline would have to die to the real world... like the children in the closet.

Okay, so that makes me wonder - did the children in the closet AGREE to stay with the other mother when she asked??? Did she sew on the buttons/take their lives and then lose interest in them? Or did they try to get away from her and she threw them behind the mirror permanently? Because Coraline never got a good look at them (except for her dream) - could they have had the same button eyes?

[Ms. Hicks]

When I first read I thought the buttons were a metaphor to mean they were flat and glassy. Then there was another reference and was like, "oh...they are actually buttons." I'm with Vivian - I think they showed that she is soul-less. I'm reminded of that saying the eyes are the windows to the soul.

[Angie, YA lovin mod!!]

I love the whole button theme! Spooky! The questions about the children are good ones. We never actually got the background on them. How were the captured? I think eventually they did get buttons sewed on their eyes.. which is why they weren't alive anymore. I like the fact that buttons have to be sewn on.. almost like once you get them they are permanent.

[PandaRanda]

I myself felt more than just a little queasy when Coraline's other parents wanted to sew the buttons into her eyes...so that she would become their doll.

[Angie, YA lovin mod!!]

OK yea freaky! And that was like right when they met her too!

[Ermelinde]

I think the buttons were quite a creative idea even if they seemed creepy, but perhaps that was what they were meant to portray.

[J-Lynn Van Pelt]

I thought of them as representing death. Black, shiny buttons instead of eyes. Ew! Also, it gave the characters a doll-like quality, like this was all a big game. While it was definitely creepy, I also think it was a ploy to make Coraline feel like she was playing house.

I got the impression that the Other Mother, who had the power to create the illusion of any world, could have appeared in another form, but purposely chose the button-eyed other mother persona.

[Terri]

The buttons seemed to me the lack of a soul/wholeness. The Other Mother never really wanted Coraline herself - she just wanted the IDEA of Corlaline - like a pet.

[mari]

I have always hated dolls with button eyes. They are creepy.
So, I agree with what Vivian said about the Other Mother and the others in her world as being "soulless dolls".

[Sandi]

I just read "Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill. (I highly recommended if you like ghost stories.) Anyhow, the ghosts in the story had a feature that reminded me very much of the Other Mother and the inhabitants of the the other world in Coraline. In Hill's book, ghosts look like their eyes have been scribble out with felt marker. When I first encountered that description, I thought about the eyes hidden by buttons in "Coraline" and am a bit more convinced that the buttons symbolize death.