reading log #6

Novel – The haunting of hill house by Shirley Jackson.

Haunting of house hill is about a house hidden within hills, 4 people discover the house rented by Dr Mountage and his servants/freinds for the summer. The Dr seeks to find the existence of the super natural form of life, the story expands to show the four people being shown around by the Dr, he explains the past haunted stories and sucides in the house. There are two friends of the Dr who actually accept the invitation to stay at the house during summer, these characters being Elenor and Theodora – both of these people specifically choosen due to past experiences with super natural events. Eventually all characters begin to experience super natural issues with the house, including noises at night, unexpected movement and strange writing on the wall. The house ends up connecting with Elenors body, the fear of the super natural extends into her body, she is possessed and ends up killing herself as she is forced to depart from the house. The idea of fear comes from the unknown and the supernatural phenomena

An idea of fear presented in the text involved power, Dr mountage held large amounts of knowledge about supernatural activity, he choose to pursue his thirst for understanding and continued to sacrifice his friends until he knew what is causing these strange events. The power of knowledge is a fearful subject, his friends saw him pushing this to far yet knew they could do nothing about his thirst. We can see his obsession with the quote – “I assure you,” the doctor said, “that Hill House will be quiet tonight. There is a pattern to these things, as though psychic phenomena were subject to laws of a very particular sort.” he had everything tracked out worked out, when the pattern of disturbance was and the phenomena laws. I feel in society the power of knowledge is a dangerous thing to have, we see people ending up in jail as they know how to create illegal things, the ways in and out of high ended places, ways to get round borders etc, the power of knowledge pushes people to greed and need. I personally relate to the novel in the sense that sometimes obsessions can push you till you break, I tend to not be able to let go and this always cause pain rather than success.

Another idea of fear was the history of the house, the previous actions and stories told through time. Dr Mountage explained that apparent suicides took place in the house, this holds fear through the question of why?, what drove these people to do it and why was this house known for it? This fear connects with the fear of the unknown, past stories can only be told by people, the truth and the reasons why can only be kept with the people it happened to. In society we hear and see stories in the news about tragic events and suicide, with New Zealand reaching their highest ever number this year in march. We all question what was going on inside these peoples heads that we see on the news and in the papers, how bad was their life that they could leave their family and would rather be dead? these answers we will never know, things take bigger tolls on people than we could ever understand, everyone is different and making assumptions about why is not okay. I personally have never had to deal with the fear of scary stories close to home, I live in a place where that kinda stuff is hardy common, but I can see that suicide isn’t actually that uncommon. To this day and age technology has created a large toll on peoples mental health and emotions, in this time that the novel was set they would never have to deal with this, however the relastionship is formed through the suicide topic.“To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls.” This quote connects to the fear of the unknown, the Dr drove himself based of curiosity, he believed that he needed to relive himself of how the supernatural in the haunted house worked, in order to control his fear, if he didn’t then that moment would shape him as a person, it would stay in his soul.

I typically don’t read fiction books, however my reaction to this text was that it had a lot of ideas put behind it, the idea of fear was strong throughout with the simple nature of the supernatural phenomenon and the idea of not knowing if it exists or not. I started to comprehend the strength of an obsession can have on a person, it can drive your curiosity to a whole new level and push your boundaries you’d never think you’d break.

In conclusion the concept of fear is strong through the novel, I see the act of the Dr’s thirst for knowledge as a fearful manor, he persisted his cursiotry into areas that affected his friends life, not only as a reader did I pick up this fear but also the other characters did, they began to fear their lives as they knew the doctor wouldn’t stop util he undertook the house.