As
mentioned in my Wednesday blog entry, I found the quote, “marriage of the positive and the
negative-the objective ambiguity,”
to be very interesting. As I read more of House of Leaves, I also thought that
it applied to the house. The house is many things – it has many hidden rooms
that come and go, it takes away and it gives back, and it is an always changing
between what it is and what it could be.
The house is described as
“collapsing, expanding, tilting, closing, but always in perfect relation to the
mental state of the individual.” This is especially important as Navidson and
the rest of the explorers come to understand the house. At the surface, and as
the house is still mysterious to the crew, the positive (as the house is) view
of the house is a massive and constantly changing entity. It reflects the fact
that they are still exploring the house and don’t know what the house contains
or what it means. Once the Halloway crew reaches the bottom and Navidson comes
in after him, the stairway shrinks and they make it down in much faster than
the other crew. As well as the point made in the book that “Navidson’s rapid
descent reflects his own knowledge that the Spiral Staircase is not bottomless,” I think this reflects the negative view of the
house (the house as it should be). Navidson, Tom, and Reston are on a rescue
mission and they know that they need to find the others soon. The house changes
to meet their mental state and thus the staircase changes from an estimated 13
miles down (and hundreds of feet in diameter) to a mere 5 minute walk and only
about 100 feet down. This all connects back to the objective ambiguity of experiencing
events in different ways based on their knowledge and understanding of the
event.
Karen is another great example
of the objective ambiguity in House of Leaves. At first I was very much
inclined to dislike Karen. She comes across as, one of the many fake references
used in the story describes her as, a “cold bitch, plain and simple.” From the
accounts given in the book, she is depicted as a cheater and impatient and
petty with Navidson. The whole reason that they move to Virginia is because
Karen has offered an ultimatum that Will spend all his time with the family and
not on his job or she would leave. Soon, there is new information about Karen
presented that shows her in a new light. She has a crippling case of
claustrophobia that was brought on, if not from a rape that her sister had
claimed, possibly some other unspeakably horrible event in her childhood. When
Navidson wanted to explore the new hallways, Karen was terrified for him and
asked him not to explore it further for his safety. It showed that she did care
about his welfare and wanted him not to feel any of her fear about the place. Also,
she is shown as forgiving later in the book when she is putting together A
Brief History of Who I Love and finally finds out what Delial means. She tries
to turn her life around to prepare for reconciliation. This objective ambiguity
shows that Karen is a human with both good traits and flaws but is all the more
interesting of a character for not being so one-dimensional.
1 comment:
Paraphrasing can be unnecessary or even counterproductive - but one thing I wondered here is what your understanding of the Marcuse quote is. It's interesting to pull it out of context - it may be effective here, even - but it *is* pulled out of context, and that inevitably creates problems (positive, negative, and objective all have fairly precise and arguably unusual meanings in Marcuse).
The second paragraph shows that your reading has merit. You *have* thought it through. I do think it would be better if you more clear about what you were doing with Marcuse, rather than kind of winging it.
Your analysis of Karen't ambiguity is fine - but I don't know that this is anything like "objective ambiguity" in Marcuse's sense - again, you needed to do some kind of analysis of Marcuse himself in order to really work with this line.
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