Coraline: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Coraline heads up the stairs on the side of the building to the other crazy old man’s flat. She is full of fear as she ascends but reminds herself that she’s an explorer—and that if she made it out of the empty flat alive, she can do anything. Still, Coraline fears that whatever lies in store for her upstairs will be worse even than the creature in the empty flat.

At the top of the stairs, Coraline opens the door and lets herself in. She immediately hears the rats singing their creepy, threatening song and can see their red eyes staring at her through the dark. A voice in another room calls to Coraline, and she follows it into a bedroom around the corner. Coraline tries to calm her mounting fear by reminding herself that everything in this world is either an illusion or a copy of something from her own world. She stops suddenly for a second, remembering the snow globe on the mantelpiece and wondering why there is something in this world that doesn’t exist in her own.

The voice rings out again, beckoning Coraline to the bedroom. Coraline makes her way to the door of the room and peers in—she sees the other crazy old man upstairs sitting in the dark, bundled in his coat. He speaks to Coraline and urges her to stay in this world where she’ll be loved and appreciated, and never bored or ignored. Coraline asks the other crazy old man if she will be able to have anything she wants if she stays in this world, and he assures her she’ll have “whatever [she] desire[s].” Coraline tells the other old man that life would be no fun if she got everything she wanted—and he can’t understand that because he’s just a “bad copy” of a person. 

The other crazy old man sadly states that he’s “not even [a copy] anymore.” Coraline looks through the stone and sees a blue glow coming from the other crazy old man’s chest. She doesn’t want to get any closer to him, but she knows she must. As soon as she takes a step into the room, however, the man falls apart—he is not a man after all, but rather hundreds of rats in the shape of a man. The rats scatter and flee, and Coraline realizes that the largest of them is carrying the marble.

Coraline follows the rats out the front door and down the stairs, but at the bottom of the steps she falls to the ground and skins her knee and her palms on the concrete. Coraline is miserable—she has lost track of the rat and knows she’ll never recover the third marble. Coraline believes she has failed not only the lost children, but her parents and herself, as well. She closes her eyes and begins crying, but soon she hears a sound just in front of her. She opens her eyes to see that the cat has brought her the decapitated rat—which is still clutching the marble in its paws.

Coraline picks up the marble and hears one of the lost children call to her—the child warns Coraline that the other mother is furious and will never let her leave. Coraline, however, is determined to complete the game—she has all three souls, and she knows where her parents are at last. Because the other mother can’t create—she can only twist and corrupt—something new in the house has caught Coraline’s eye. Whereas the mantlepiece at home is empty of trinkets, the one here has a snow globe on it, and Coraline must get to it quickly.

Coraline notices that the cat has gone stiff and its fur is sticking up. The cat warns Coraline that the world has gone “flat” all of a sudden—the other mother has sealed up the ways in and out of her world. Coraline promises she’ll get the cat home. Coraline picks the frightened cat up and feels it trembling in her arms. Coraline carries the cat inside as it gently licks her wounds. As Coraline approaches the front door, she sees that the house has changed—it looks flat, sketchy, and barely-formed. Still, when Coraline pushes at the door, it opens and lets her through.