{"id":188,"date":"2008-09-27T00:06:27","date_gmt":"2008-09-27T04:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/?p=188"},"modified":"2008-09-27T00:06:27","modified_gmt":"2008-09-27T04:06:27","slug":"week-5-references-and-allusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/archives\/188","title":{"rendered":"Week #5 – References and Allusions"},"content":{"rendered":"

**<\/strong>SPOILER ALERT!**<\/strong><\/h3>\n

<\/strong>When I was reading House of Leaves for the first time, it was impossible to look up all the historical, literary, religious references that MZD added to the text.\u00a0 Since I went through the book several more times to build the model for Inquiry #2, I had a chance to slow down a bit and was able to do some research on some of those references.\u00a0 I thought it’d be fun to talk about a few of them here:<\/p>\n

Ash <\/strong>Tree Lane<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously, the Navidson’s house is on Ash Tree Lane.\u00a0 The ash tree apparently plays a significant role in Norse myths.\u00a0 The Yggdrasil<\/a><\/em> (Old Norse for ash tree) was believed to be the World Tree that stands at the center of the universe.\u00a0 This World Tree joins the nine worlds of Norse cosmology, which includes worlds that exist above, on, and below earth.\u00a0 MZD might have chosen Ash Tree Lane as the location for the Navidson’s house because it a place where the human world and the supernatural world coexist.\u00a0 The reference suggests that the house is at the center of the universe, or at least suggests that something important and universal happens in that house.\u00a0 I wonder if there is any mention in the text of the existence of nine worlds.<\/p>\n

Succoth<\/strong><\/p>\n

While I’m on the topic of the location of the house, the narrative also describes the house as “sitting quietly on the corner of Succoth and Ash Tree Lane” (18).\u00a0 Succoth<\/a> <\/em>is Hebrew for the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacle, but it can also refer to a location.\u00a0 This location could be (among other places) “the place of entering into darkness” or “where Jacob, on his return from Padan-aram after his interview with Esau, built a house for himself and made sukkot<\/em> (booths) for his cattle.”\u00a0 The Jacob reference is connected to Chapter XI, where critics attempt to make a comparison between Jacob and Will Navidson.\u00a0 I’m still not really sure how this comparison is important to the overall scheme of the novel.<\/p>\n

Devil’s Ear <\/strong><\/p>\n

In the story Johnny tells about being a Pit Boxer includes the detail that the Captain took him to Devil’s Ear in Florida<\/a> (15).\u00a0 Devil’s ear is an underwater network of caverns<\/a> that reminds me a lot of a labyrinth.\u00a0 The experience of going through this cave network is probably similar to the experience of exploring the labyrinth of the house.\u00a0 In fact, people have died in that cave despite the efforts to enact safety measures such as this sign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are also subtler connections between this underwater location and the text.\u00a0 Reston becomes sea sick when he goes on the rescue mission into the house with Navidson, and the metaphor of sea exploration appears throughout the text.\u00a0 In addition, the reference to the sea and to the ear is mentioned in Navidson’s Dream #2.\u00a0 In footnote 385, Derrida plays with the French word for snail (lima\u00e7on<\/em>), which could refer to a spiral staircase (such as the one in Navidson’s house) or the spiral canal of the inner ear (the cochlea<\/a>).\u00a0 Note that the diagram of the cochleal fluids vaguely resembles the map for Devil’s Ear.\u00a0 The reference might also be related to the theme of sounds in the novel (e.g. the echo), since the cochlea is the part of the ear that transforms vibrations from the air into nerve signals to the brain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**SPOILER ALERT!** When I was reading House of Leaves for the first time, it was impossible to look up all the historical, literary, religious references that MZD added to the text.\u00a0 Since I went through the book several more times to build the model for Inquiry #2, I had a chance to slow down a … Continue reading Week #5 – References and Allusions<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/414\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}