52 pages • 1 hour read
Mark Z. DanielewskiHouse Of Leaves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Eros and Thanatos
Characters in this novel are beset by the Eros/Thanatos duality. In Freudian terminology, Eros represents the life instinct, which essentially is the desire to live, propagate, and create. Its counterpart, Thanatos, is the death drive, which moves towards destruction and violence. The main characters experience almost constant tension between these two warring drives.
The main characters begin the novel by embracing Eros. Johnny, at the beginning, is obsessed with sex—literally a life-creating pursuit. His footnotes contain repeated, in-depth descriptions of sexual encounters with many women. Sex allows him to forget about the manuscript and drives much of his day-to-day actions. He is also obsessed with Thumper, and her image occupies a great deal of his mental space. Johnny’s work on the manuscript at least partially represents Eros as well: as he reads, edits, and writes, he gives life to a project. He is aware that he is searching for something life-giving: “I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap” (20).
Will Navidson also embraces Eros when he and his family move into the house. He is hoping to repair, or give new life, to his relationship with Karen and mend his somewhat distant relationship with his family. His act of exploration also at least partially stems from an Erotic drive—he wishes to explore and discover, thus giving name and seeking knowledge of a mystery. His photographs are also driven by Eros; as Zampanò notes, Will “never photographed the threat of death without interposing someone else between himself and it” (422).
These characters, however, are also beset by Thanatos. As time goes on, sex holds less and less appeal for Johnny. Instead of going out, he remains in his apartment, isolated and disconnected from the world. When his main object of desire, Thumper, invites him over, he refuses, instead preferring to nurse his death drive alone. He notes, “Beautiful as her voice is, it’s just not strong enough to draw me from this course” (365). Johnny’s work on the manuscript also eventually contains a death drive: as each day goes by, it grabs a hold of him more and more. and seems to suck the life out of him. He is simultaneously giving the manuscript life while having his life sucked away from him.
Will’s exploration of the hallway is also representative of a death drive. It kills his relationship with Karen—she begs him to leave the hallway alone, but Will cannot resist, thus placing an ever-growing strain on their relationship. The hallway and the house also cause the literal death of Holloway, Jed, and Tom. In one way, Will embraces Thanatos when he returns to the house: “he sought nothing less than to see the house exact its annihilating effects on his own being” (387). However, Zampanò concludes that Will goes back to get a better image, thus still trying to create something. The house ultimately lets Will live, and he does not succumb to Thanatos.
The Instability of Place and Time
Both time and place are unstable in the novel. The house on Ash Tree Lane defies the notion of stability. At first, the interior is slightly larger than the exterior, thus confounding measurement. The hallway grows and shrinks, sometimes containing countless rooms, other times only measuring ten feet in length. To the Navidsons, the measurements seem impossible. Zampanò notes, “The impossible is one thing when considered as a purely intellectual conceit […] It is quite another when one faces a psychical reality the mind and body cannot accept” (30). Here, physicality defies traditional logic. Johnny, after becoming absorbed in the manuscript, also experiences instability of place. During his episodes, space changes around him. He remains in the same spot, but other unexplained factors enter the space, such as strange smells and the beast.
In his comments, Zampanò brings into play the idea of perception: “Is it possible to think of that space as ‘unshaped’ by human perceptions?” (173). In this way, place is not an unquestionably stable element. Rather, it has the potential to be shaped by the energy and psychology entering it. The novel makes it unclear, especially when it comes to Johnny, if the space is actually changing or if it is just his perception. In this way, space cannot be trusted as a stable element in this novel.
Time also defies stability, especially in Johnny’s world. He notes, “Mostly the clock tells me the time, though I suspect the hands run intermittently fast and slow, so I’m never sure of the exact hour” (296). As he becomes more and more absorbed with the manuscript, he can no longer trust traditional timekeeping instruments. He also rails against the broader notion of linear time, saying, “Ever see yourself doing something in the past and no matter how many times you remember it you still want to scream stop, somehow redirect the action, reorder the present” (xiv). In any case, Johnny is powerless against the construct of time, which sometimes obeys traditional logic, and at other times does not.
Narrative Instability
The novel creates a deep narrative instability on the typographical level of the text itself. It is written in several different fonts and colors. The text often abandons typical form and is at times written upside down, backwards, or diagonally. The page does not obey convention, and sometimes contains only a few words. With these departures from novelistic conventions, the reader is shaken—there is no steady footing here, and also no way for a reader to forget that House of Leaves is a construct—a common device in postmodern literature. In some instances, the text is struck through, words are missing letters, or entire pages are missing. The text represents a threat to legibility—it is difficult for the reader to make out the words, at times, and thus understand content. The novel communicates that the reader should not fully trust it. Thus, the very form of the text encourages the reader to question its reliability.
The editor and narrator of the footnotes, Johnny Truant, contributes to this narrative instability. Johnny professes himself a teller of stories that are often fabricated. When discussing the story of his scars, he notes, “There are many variations of that one” (20). When he tells a story in real time, it is often unclear to the reader what actually happens in the world of the novel. For example, during one of his episodes, he says, “I vomited […] Except I only coughed. I didn’t cough” (43). He states an action, alters the action, then negates this action. Here, Johnny demonstrates that his words are not be trusted. Having a narrator like Johnny, who is responsible for presenting the manuscript, makes the reader doubt the information presented.
