House Of Leaves

“You’ll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by.” 

These lines introduce the overarching theme of instability. The manuscript is a destabilizing object that calls into question all things that used to be stable, as does the house. Gravity, physics, and consciousness are all called into question over the course of the book. 

“Too many important things in The Navidson Record jut out past the borders.” 

These lines touch on the issue of boundaries compromised. Nothing seems to be self-contained, like the house, the text, the characters themselves, but rather bleed into each other and cause identity to be questioned. Ambiguity—a central trait of postmodern literature—is everywhere in House of Leaves. 

“I’m a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff.” 

Johnny speaks of Zampanò’s manuscript and reveals aspects of his character. He is someone always on the outside, drawn to people and objects outside of the “normal.” 

“Largeness has always been a condition of the weird and unsafe; it is overwhelming, too much or too big.” 

These lines comment on the immensity of the house—it is so large that it is unknowable and defies measurement; further, any measurements that are taken prove to be false when the house is remeasured. In this way, anyone who enters the dwelling is unsafe since they cannot fully understand their surroundings. 

“Daisy and Chad, ‘denied the paradox by swallowing it whole.’” 

Here, Zampanò refers to Daisy and Chad’s evaluation of the house. Everyone encounters it differently, and the children do not try to understand its mystery but rather accept it, in part because they are children and cannot deny its “reality” in the same way that adults can. Nonetheless, the house does seem to negatively impact them, as witnessed in their drawings. 

“Echo’s voice, ‘possesses a quality not present in the original, revealing how a nymph can return a different and more meaningful story, in spite of telling the same story.’” 

When describing an echo, Zampanò touches on the issue of repetition and difference, which relates to the uncanny, a major motif in this novel. When something is repeated and slightly different, like an echo, it creates a new layer of meaning, one that is often troubling or disturbing due to its uncanny nature. This manifests in both the manuscript and the house in the novel.

“The rest is in pieces. A scream, a howl, a roar. All’s warping, or splintering.” 

Johnny describes one of his encounters with the “beast.” It is hard for him to tell what is happening, and what he experiences in regard to the beast is often different. These lines also point to the overarching idea of instability—it is unclear what is truly happening in moments like these, both for Johnny and for the reader. Johnny is thereby established relatively early on as an unreliable narrator. 

“But when the four dead bolts are at last unlocked and the hallway door drawn open, the icy darkness instantly slaughters every smile and glance.” 

These lines personify the hallway in the house. Its power is intense, and its coldness and darkness overwhelm all who enter. The change in temperature quickly establishes the hallway as different. In its contortions and ceaseless augmentations, the hallway is grimly mutable, a labyrinth from which not all the characters will escape. One way of considering the hallway is that it embodies plot itself; just as a narrative’s events shift and surprise, so, too, does this element of the house. 

“North it seems has no authority there.” 

Compasses do not work in the house, and normal measurements of space do not apply; thus, the house is essentially unnavigable. This, too, may speak to the notion of plot in postmodern literature, as plot is a craft element commonly eschewed in postmodern literature, and/or commented upon as construction; that is, there is often no attempt at suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. The hallway, like a book’s plot, is both a construct and consistently changing.  

“Every time I tried to open my door, my heart started racing for a bypass.” 

As time goes on, Johnny becomes increasingly isolated. He is about to meet a girl for a date, but he is unable to do so because it is difficult for him to leave both his room and the manuscript. In altering Zampanò’s manuscript, Johnny begins to become a sort of different version of Zampanò.

“Eventually the entire segment becomes a composition of strain.” 

These lines exemplify Zampanò’s close analysis of The Navidson Report, often on a shot-by-shot basis. Here, he describes a scene from Exploration #4. His analysis points to the feelings of strain and discomfort that become more and more apparent in the hallway. The notion of a “composition of strain” is something that may be applied to House of Leaves itself, too, as the book is proactively constructed in a manner to show strain and artificiality. 

“A perfect example of how Zampanò likes to obscure the secondary sources he’s using in order to appear more versed in primary documents.” 

Johnny comments on Zampanò’s text, underlining the way in which Zampanò will pass off an idea as his own without quoting the source. This is an example of narrative instability in which the reader is unsure of the validity of the text being read. Postmodernism essentially asserts that there is no single or ultimate source of truth—there is no universal order (often predicated upon science, in Enlightenment thought). By not revealing the reader the primary sources, this notion is asserted here.

“I am led to a somewhat interesting suspicion: King Minos did not build the labyrinth to imprison a monster but to conceal a deformed child, his child.” 

These lines are typed in red and struck through, as are all passages regarding the Minotaur. Another tenet of postmodern literature is the inclusion of and referencing to other texts, often classical ones. In House of Leaves, both the myth of the Minotaur and Dante’s Inferno are referenced. Dante himself, in Inferno, makes reference to the Minotaur, seeing the creature in The Seventh Circle of Hell, which holds those with violent natures. By subverting the notion of the Minotaur as innately violent, and instead presenting the mythical creature as a physically-disabled child, imprisoned so as not to horrify citizens, Daneilewski reinvents the myth. However, with these lines crossed out, he then cancels out the myth he makes, arguably re-establishing the original Minotaur myth. The end result is ambiguity, a common trope in postmodern literature. 

“All solutions then are necessarily personal.” 

Zampanò makes this comment regarding the house. To him, it is a labyrinth that is constantly shifting—every person must find their own way out. This concept contributes to the theme of instability of place and mirrors how individual readers will make their through House of Leaves, as Danielewski has purposefully constructed a book where there is no one clear path through reading it. An implicit goal of House of Leaves, it would seem, is to divert or otherwise disallow the ‘natural’ movement of a narrative. In Western culture, we read left to right, and up to down, and we move only forward in a text. House of Leaves works differently, with the reader often needing to backtrack in order to understand where they are in the narrative (as in a labyrinth) and the arrangement of the text on the page often not moving in a standard way.

“It looks like it’s impossible to leave a lasting trace here.”

These lines describe the rescue mission undertaken by Will, Tom, and Billy. The house and/or the beast consume the previous party’s markers, and humans are unable to make a lasting mark on the house, thus demonstrating the house’s position of power in this novel. One way to interpret this is the notion of characters not having free will in the confines of a narrative’s plot; characters’ actions are of course created by the author, who effectively traps their characters inside the plot of the narrative.  

“My blissful bower’s fallen, overrun by weeds and deadly vines.” 

Johnny uses highly poetic and figurative languages to describe how sex, a primary drive of his character, no longer has the same effect. It also exemplifies the ways in which Johnny’s language becomes highly poetic at times. Further, it employs an element common to postmodern literature: the blending of high and low/mass culture. Johnny uses highly-poetic language to speak of the “low-culture” act of sex, thereby simultaneously elevating the act and lowering the poetic language. 

“It is painful[ ] obvious the creature Holloway hunts has already begun to feed on him.”

These lines provide an example of textual deviation—letters are missing because Zampanò spills ash on the manuscript. The threat to legibility ties into the theme of narrative instability—the reader does not have a full grasp of the text if they cannot physically read every part of it. 

“Your monster, however, is purely American. Edgeless for one thing, something a compendium of diverse cultures definitely requires.” 

Here, Andrew Ross expresses his opinion of the monster. In the text, the monster is a fluid object—it is not necessarily a literal monster, but instead represents aspects of various characters in the novel. House of Leaves consistently employs literary critics—both actual and fictional—to comment on various aspects of the manuscript contained in the novel. This is one way that House of Leaves can be seen as metafictional, or a narrative that is in part about the act of writing. 

“God’s a house.” 

Will expresses this opinion in a letter to Karen. He comments on the immensity and undefinable nature of the house. God is the ultimate, undefinable being—he is everywhere and nowhere, much like the house.

“An even greater number of people dwelling on The Navidson Record have shown an increase in obsessiveness, insomnia, and incoherence.” 

The Haven-Slocum Theory points to the effects of the house. These lines produce a mirroring effect—the house has a certain effect on its inhabitants while the manuscript has this effect on Johnny and Zampanò.

“Though they probably assume subject matter is the key to their reaction, the real cause is the way the balance of objects within the frame involves the beholder. It instantly makes a participant out of any witness.” 

Here, Zampanò describes Will’s photo of Delial. The subtext of these lines is the breaking down of the 4th wall, a notion more commonly ascribed to theater, and especially postmodern theater. Whereas traditional theater effectively ignores audience, the breaking down of this figurative wall, and having actors (and narratives) be aware they’re being watched/read plays heavily in postmodernism. 

“A sudden vertigo of loss, when looking down, or is it really looking back?, leaves me experiencing all of it at once, which is way too much.” 

Johnny makes this statement as a reaction to Lude’s death. It touches on the novel’s theme of the instability of time and place, which are often inconsistent both for Johnny and for those who enter the house. 

“Like a bad dream, the details of those five and a half minutes just went and left me to my future.” 

Johnny is referring to his experience when his mother may or may not have attempted to strangle him. Again, there is great instability of narration and of truth—he does not know what happened. The time frame, five and a half minutes, also mirrors the “Five and a Half Minute Hallway” film, thereby creating an echo effect.