43 pages • 1 hour read
William SleatorHouse of Stairs
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
When Lola comes back to the group, she is annoyed to find them dancing and having fun. Frustrated by their oblivious behavior, she lashes out at Oliver for making the situation seem less serious than it is. She and Blossom have another altercation, and Oliver starts to defend Blossom. Lola then realizes that she should not antagonize the others and apologizes for getting angry. She explains that she is frustrated and afraid because she assumes that they are in a prison and undergoing psychological torture. She also announces that she has found a toilet and that they will have to drink from it as well. Finally, they all try to make the food machine work again, but since it remains still and silent, the teenagers all go to sleep.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
When Blossom wakes up later, she decides to get Lola to trust her in order to use what she can learn against the other girl. Blossom then asks Lola to lead her to the toilet while Oliver tries to get the food machine to work again. As they walk together, Lola confronts Blossom about hating her. Blossom denies it and pretends to have had a change of heart now that Lola has apologized. She also encourages Lola to become the group’s leader rather than Oliver. The two girls eventually find their way to the toilet, which is perched in the middle of a thin bridge, thanks to a piece of cloth that Lola left as a marker. When they leave, Lola suggests that they place another marker to help the others find their way to the toilet later. Blossom reluctantly agrees to tear up a piece of her dress to finally gain Lola’s approval. After she does, she and Lola have a conversation about the others, during which Lola expresses some negative sentiments toward Peter, Oliver, and Abigail.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
Oliver has unsuccessfully been trying to make the food machine work. He takes his role within the group quite seriously and wants to appear strong and reliable to the others. He is slightly unsettled by some of the others, but he is particularly flustered around Abigail since boys and girls are usually kept apart in state orphanages. Eventually, he sets out to find another working food machine and takes Abigail along, hoping to speak to her away from the others. Once alone with Abigail, Oliver is less confident. However, when she tells him about her own worry and fear, the young boy comforts her. He then kisses her before pushing her away, thrilled but overwhelmed. They resume their exploration, and Oliver later apologizes for his behavior. As they get back to the group, they are startled by lights and voices coming from the food machine.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
Peter daydreams about Jasper again and tries to figure out his conflicting feelings toward Oliver. His memories take on a dream-like, idyllic quality, but his thoughts are interrupted by the machine’s noises. The others all gather around it, but Lola notes that Peter was not sleeping. His eyes were open and staring at the machine for a while before he even noticed the lights. The teenagers all try to decipher the whispers coming from the machine, but they all hear different phrases. Confused and panicking slightly, they begin arguing with each other. As their argument heats up, the machine suddenly drops a piece of food. Lola realizes that something they did triggered it, so she prompts the group to repeat their latest actions. The teenagers reenact the last few seconds like a dance until the machine drops more food. After a short while, Blossom breaks and rushes toward the food. The others join her, and they eat everything but are still hungry afterward. Lola laments that they did not save up any of the food, not knowing when they may get any more. Eventually, they settle down and get some sleep.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
Lola is the first to awaken when the machine starts up again, still whispering and blinking red lights. She wakes the others, and they follow her plan, performing their choreographed sequence repeatedly until the machine stops giving them food. The group has now learned the pattern and knows to perform the dance every time the machine is working.
Part 1, Chapters 6-10 Analysis
Part 1 of House of Stairs focuses on establishing the characters’ relationships and power dynamics, which in turn enhances the emotional stakes of their being trapped in an unfamiliar, threatening place. First, Lola’s practical mind and initiative cement her as the group’s leader. However, her occasional abrasiveness tends to antagonize the others, such as when she attacks Oliver for encouraging the others to dance. Lola takes their situation seriously, and she is often the first to realize the danger they are in. This further characterizes her as a leader, but Oliver’s arrival threatens her position in the group. Indeed, Oliver is a strong contender for the role of leader because of his confidence and charisma. However, the narrative hints at his desire for Power and Control, which foreshadows his spiral into possessiveness and paranoia: “[Oliver] desperately wanted to be the one to make the machine work. Somehow his relationship with all the others depended on it” (55). Significantly, Lola and Oliver’s rivalry for leadership reveals that they are still influenced by the rigid hierarchy they experienced in the outside world. However, Oliver and Lola have different motivations. Oliver seeks to assert his dominance over the others, including Lola: “She was unlike any other girl Oliver had ever known […] for she did not respond to him the way other girls had. He felt no power over her, […] and for this reason he did not know how to behave with her” (56). By contrast, Lola does not seek the others’ approval but instead wants them to work together. This foreshadows her character arc as she comes to realize The Importance of Solidarity and Compassion. While Oliver is unable to give up control in favor of collaboration, Lola repeatedly encourages the others to keep a united front against the machine. Their evolution becomes evident in Part 2 of the novel, but it is set up in Chapter 8 especially.
As for Blossom, her true nature is revealed in Chapter 7, which is told through her point of view. Blossom explicitly sets out to undermine Lola’s authority out of a twisted, self-aggrandizing sense of morality: “It was her duty, in fact, to probe into Lola’s odiousness, and to help the others, for their own good, to understand it” (48). To accomplish her goal, Blossom then uses emotional manipulation and coerces Lola into venting about the others behind their backs. This cements Blossom’s role as an antagonist, as she fosters dissent to serve her own interests. In addition, Blossom’s worry about Lola’s motives, which she assumes are nefarious, hints at her later descent into paranoia and cruelty. This conflict further illustrates The Social Impact of Authoritarianism since, in this extreme version of a surveillance state, the protagonists are encouraged to view one another as rivals and to give in to their basest impulses.
Significantly, the paragraphs that serve as a transition to Part 2 differ from the rest of the narrative. Unlike the rest of the novel, which is told from the protagonists’ alternating perspectives, the end of Chapter 10 is narrated by an omniscient voice:
And so they learned the first rudiments of dance and that they were to be told when to perform it. […] And, of course, whether or not it worked was part of a pattern, and there would be other patterns too. But as yet they were too close to the outside world to be able to understand them, or to tolerate what was inevitably going to come (72).
The effect of this narrative shift is twofold. Narratively speaking, this conclusion creates suspense and intrigue. It foreshadows some of the main plot points that are about to take place in Part 2 with an ominous, unsettling tone that reflects the protagonists’ dire situation. Thematically, this passage also ties into The Social Impact of Authoritarianism as well as Power and Control. Indeed, the all-knowing narrator who observes the protagonists from a removed point of view parallels the all-powerful authority that manipulates them through constant surveillance. Incidentally, this reinforces Lola’s claims that they are in a prison and being psychologically tortured, which further builds tension.
Related Titles
By William Sleator
