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.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
In Zampanò’s text, Holloway, Jed, and Wax continue their journey on Exploration #4, but “the purpose of that vast place still continues to elude them” (111). They reach the bottom of the staircase, where they take samples and place neon markers on the walls. They go through a series of rooms leading onto hallway, which lead onto more rooms. As they begin to trek back and ascend the staircase, they notice their neon markers have been “badly mauled” and some of their water is gone from their “caches” (122). Holloway is determined to investigate, since he thinks the discoveries are connected to the growl. Jed and Wax decide to head back, but Holloway refuses and “has run off blind” (125).They re-encounter Holloway when he accidentally shoots Wax in the armpit, thinking Wax is the beast. Holloway refuses to help carry Wax back, so Jed does so on his own. Holloway pursues the two men, continuing to shoot at them.
In the main text, Zampanò includes commentary from various authors on the medium of film and photography, and the ways in which both mediums have become less reliable as they’ve become more easily manipulated. He concludes that nothing in The Navidson Record is a result of special effects, since Navidson simply did not have the funding necessary.
Additionally, Zampanò introduces the concept of the labyrinth as well as the myth of the Minotaur, both in the main text and footnotes. Daedalus creates a labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, which is meant to “incarcerate the Minotaur, a creature born from an illicit encounter between the queen and a bull” (110). All the text about the Minotaur is in red ink and struck through. Johnny explains that Zampanò tried to get rid of the text, but he resurrected it with “a little bit of turpentine and a good old magnifying glass” (11).
Within Zampanò’s footnotes, there are exhaustive lists that go on for pages, containing names of people and sources, examples of architectural works, and lists of objects. Zampanò also goes into the stories of two historical explorers, Fernando Magellan and Henry Hudson, comparing their expeditions and experiences to Holloway’s. He also includes the Coleridge poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
Johnny’s first footnote describes an encounter with Tatiana, another one of Zampanò’s readers. On the way to her apartment, Johnny thinks he is hit by a truck then a tree but discovers neither of those things have happened. After Tatiana hands over one of Zampanò’s reading lists, they have a sexual encounter, which involves Johnny masturbating and ejaculating on Tatiana’s body.
In another footnote, Johnny and Lude go out. Johnny brings a piece of Zampanò’s writing talking about a woman named Natasha. While talking to a girl named Natasha at the bar, Lude gives her the piece of writing and says that Johnny wrote it for her. Johnny leaves and meets up with an Australian girl at different bar. They go back to her apartment and have sex.
Another footnote recounts Johnny’s experience at his second boarding school. He reveals how he gets burn scars on his arms as a result of a “skillet of sizzling corn oil” falling on him when he is 4 (129). Sitting at a table in the dining hall one day, he hears “a voice in my ear—a ghost—softly saying my name” while he is daydreaming of a girl (130). He understands the voice belongs to a 17-year-old “will-o’-the-wisp, encountered many years ago, maybe even in another life” (131). Later, he understands the voice is a result of the acoustic properties of the domed ceiling and comes from someone speaking in the dining hall.
In a following footnote, Johnny meets up with a girl named Ashley, and they have sex at her house. Johnny is confused as to how they know each other; she tells him they met in Texas, but Johnny tells her he was never been there.
Finally, Johnny is in the Virgin Megastore and meets up with Hailey, and the two have sex. She later goes on a radio show and describes their encounter. When Johnny sleeps, he screams about “blood and mutilations” (149). Johnny then hears the roar again and the “awful stench” returns (150). He thinks the walls burst, and the floor falls out, but they do not. He then describes a “flood of entrails spread from wall to wall” (151).
Chapter 10 Summary
Will, Tom, and Billy set out to rescue Holloway, Jed, and Wax. Tom camps out at the top of the staircase, while Will and Billy descend and discover the staircase is only 100 feet, though they previously believed it to be 13 miles. They discover the previous expedition’s neon markers; Billy feels seasick from the changing dimensions.
On the second night, Will and Billy hear a “distant cry” and pursue it for hours (186). They move through rooms and approximately fifty sets of doors and finally come to a door with no handle, with the noise coming from the other side. Will breaks down the door and sees Jed and Wax, who are still alive. A shot comes through the darkness and hits Jed in the skull. Billy returns fire, and the men notice a figure in the distance, presumably Holloway. He escapes behind a closed door, and all the doors slam shut behind Tom and Billy. They create a makeshift stretcher for Wax and know that Jed will soon be dead.
Zampanò quotes many critics on the psychology of the house, culminating in the idea that the experience of the dwelling is subjective and reflects the psychology of the individual experiencing it.
In his footnote, Johnny goes to the doctor and gets a prescription for a sedative, which costs $175. However, he decides to destroy the pills, along with all of his alcohol and drugs. He states, “I must hear what I scream. I must remember what I dream” (180).
Chapter 11 Summary
Zampanò analyzes the relationship between Tom and Will, using criticism to compare them to the Biblical twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, the younger twin, tricks his father into giving him Esau’s birthright.
Zampanò includes a transcript of Tom’s Story, which details Tom’s filmed experience at the top of the staircase for three days. Tom communicates with Karen and Will via radio. He also talks to himself, narrating his feelings of fear and illness and directly addressing “Mr. Monster” (258). He tells a series of humorous stories to the camera. Karen confesses her concerns to Tom and tells him she plans on leaving with the kids after Will comes back. All of her Feng Shui objects have disappeared. After Jed is shot, Will asks Tom to descend the stairs. He tries to do so, gets scared when he sees the staircase move, and tells Karen he is coming back.
After reading Tom’s Story, Johnny yells at a customer at work. He recalls finding Zampanò’s manuscript the November prior, when he and Lude take a lot of the drug Ecstasy. Lude makes a “tally” of all the girls he has sex with, and Johnny lists his three: Gabriella, Barbara, and Clara English (262).In December, Johnny talks to a girl (who is named Johnnie, with an eye-ee) at a bar. Lude believes Johnnie to be a porn star. Walking out of the bar, they see a Pekinese on the corner without tags, and Johnny wants to take it home. Female Johnnie insists she has more room for the dog at her house, so Johnny agrees. After Johnnie drops Johnny off at his apartment, she throws the dog from her window, killing it.
Chapter 12 Summary
Will and Billy carry Wax and Jed (now dead) to the foot of the stairs and see Tom is not there to meet them. However, Tom has constructed a pulley with a gurney, which they use to hoist Wax and Jed up. While hoisting Billy, either the staircase expands or Will sinks. Eventually, the rope snaps. Will is at “an impossible distance down” and notes he has supplies for three days (305). At this point, the film runs out.
Johnny goes into work but realizes he has been gone for three weeks and someone has been hired in his place. He further seals up his apartment with egg crates and sets up measuring tapes to see if the space shifts. With six weeks off alcohol and drugs, “the attacks persist” (296). He realizes that, though he has not been to Texas, he has been to “Tex’s” (299). There, he met Ashley, with whom he recently had sex.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
These chapters introduce stylistic and formatting deviations in the text that have not appeared before, thus further feeding into the theme of narrative instability and the novel’s postmodern structure. In Chapter 9, the footnotes take on a new form, with some appearing in blue boxes on the top center of some pages. On the right page, they read forwards, while on the page behind, the same footnote reads backwards. Other footnotes appear on the sides of the pages, facing right-side-up on the left side, and upside down on the right side. The text becomes less and less legible, thus calling into question how the reader will process the text.
We see House of Leaves employ numerous aspects of postmodern literature in this section and others. For example, fabulation is the purposeful attempt to create a narrative that is unreal. This is different than magical realism, which adds elements of the fantastic to a novel or short story that is nonetheless still meant to be read as real, and to be believed. Fabulation, on the other hand, challenges a central notion of literature: suspension of disbelief. Fabulist narratives don’t seek to lose the reader in the plot; rather, writers of fabulist narratives want the reader to remain aware of the narrative as apparatus. While House of Leaves certainly has a plot, and certainly does contain elements of magical realism, the consistent inclusion of footnotes (especially those of The Editors) and the physical form the narrative takes on the page prove House of Leaves to contain elements of fabulism: it is purposefully impossible for a reader of the novel to suspend their disbelief, or to forget that the book is construction.
In Zampanò’s main text, white spaces appear, some separating individual words and phrases, while other white spaces separate paragraphs. The Editors explain, “Mr. Truant refused to reveal whether the flowing bizarre textual layout is Zampanò’s or his own” (134). Thus, the reader has no idea whether Zampanò intends the text to be written like this or it is Johnny’s addition. Some pages only contain letters, some of which are upside down or sideways, reading top to bottom. These textual variation elicit ambiguity in House of Leaves, another defining trait of postmodern literature.
Johnny’s own psyche continues to break down, and he continues to give conflicting accounts of what happens. In one instance, he thinks a truck and a tree hit him but later reveals he is fine. He also realizes he has been screaming in his sleep after sex, which shakes him. He thinks sex is able to keep the horrors at bay, but he comes to discover that he being constantly haunted. In this way, his credibility as a narrator as well as his perception of himself further disintegrate, despite the fact that he quits drugs and alcohol.
These chapters also introduce the motif of the labyrinth, which is a complex maze. Zampanò calls the house a labyrinth, and in order to understand a labyrinth, one has to see it as a whole. In the house, people are, “trying to peek around the next edit in another sequence […] promising the possibility of discovery while all along dissolving into chaotic ambiguities too blurry to ever completely comprehend” (114). It is impossible for the people in the house to pull back and see the entirety of the house; thus, it is impossible to make sense of it. Further, the house constantly shifts, so there is no one reality, and they cannot ascertain its true layout. The labyrinthine quality calls back to the theme of the instability of place.
On a meta-textual level, these chapters themselves are labyrinths. Each footnote and different form of text represents a path down which a reader can choose to travel. It is next to impossible to take in a “whole” all at once; rather, each path must be explored individually, creating an atmosphere of chaos and confusion.
