The Haunted House Analysis
The main thing is, why don’t they just leave? The answer in the best haunted house literature is, they don’t leave because they cannot. Something keeps them inside. When someone takes on a house they form a bond between self and architecture. Houses are where people have to go when they are trying to hide. This makes it all the more terrifying when the houses turn on us. Our houses are everywhere.
Author Shirley Jackson doesn’t require her characters to investigate and discover the real identity or psychological problems of a ghostly manifestation in order to escape Hill House. The narrative does not progress with terrified inhabitants metaphorically yanking on a door handle, trying to move an unmovable door. Instead, The Haunting of Hill House …show more content…
The first time writing appears suddenly on the wall, “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME,” just after Luke goes out and returns, wiping his hands on a handkerchief, it is important to remember Luke is a liar.
In most haunted house stories now, the tormented inhabitants of the house usually discover some secret just before the biggest, most powerful ghostly display at the climax of the narrative. These discoveries are a way to explain the horror of the house. The 1999 film adaptation, The Haunting, embraces this kind of plot structure. If I had, I would’ve known on page 50, when Dr. Montague says, “some houses are born bad… What it was like before then, whether its personality was molded by the people who lived here, or the things they did, or whether it was evil from the start, are all questions I cannot answer.”
When Eleanor, a sensitive woman who spent the past ten years reluctantly caring for an ailing mother who banged on the wall all night long, arrives at Hill House, she hates it. Why doesn’t she just leave? Pride. Plus, she has nowhere else to go. “‘But I can’t leave,’ Eleanor said, laughing still because it was so perfectly impossible to explain… ‘The house wants me to stay,’ she told the
Author Shirley Jackson doesn’t require her characters to investigate and discover the real identity or psychological problems of a ghostly manifestation in order to escape Hill House. The narrative does not progress with terrified inhabitants metaphorically yanking on a door handle, trying to move an unmovable door. Instead, The Haunting of Hill House …show more content…
The first time writing appears suddenly on the wall, “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME,” just after Luke goes out and returns, wiping his hands on a handkerchief, it is important to remember Luke is a liar.
In most haunted house stories now, the tormented inhabitants of the house usually discover some secret just before the biggest, most powerful ghostly display at the climax of the narrative. These discoveries are a way to explain the horror of the house. The 1999 film adaptation, The Haunting, embraces this kind of plot structure. If I had, I would’ve known on page 50, when Dr. Montague says, “some houses are born bad… What it was like before then, whether its personality was molded by the people who lived here, or the things they did, or whether it was evil from the start, are all questions I cannot answer.”
When Eleanor, a sensitive woman who spent the past ten years reluctantly caring for an ailing mother who banged on the wall all night long, arrives at Hill House, she hates it. Why doesn’t she just leave? Pride. Plus, she has nowhere else to go. “‘But I can’t leave,’ Eleanor said, laughing still because it was so perfectly impossible to explain… ‘The house wants me to stay,’ she told the