The opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is considered one of the most touching, significant, and arguably most famous openings in the horror genre, if not in the whole narrative. To consume means to destroy or consume through use. Most people associate consumption with plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Female Gothic: "Claire Kahane identifies characteristics of traditional Gothic narratives, including "an imposing structure" within which the protagonist, "typically a young woman, whose mother has died, is forced to seek the center of mystery, while vague and usually sexual threats against her from some powerful male figure hover on the periphery of her consciousness.” Dissociation/Depersonalization: The act or mental state of not connecting with oneself or feeling real. Maybe we'll talk about it later. Horror has been one of my favorite genres for years and The Haunting Of Hill House is one of the best known and most influential works of the horror genre. The idea of ​​a house that was evil from its conception and wasn't haunted by an outside force is incredibly intriguing and fascinating to me. Hill House hates humanity and wants to hurt, scare, and consume its inhabitants. Eleanor's fragile mental health and psyche also represent important elements in horror that are almost always present, albeit more subtly. Psychological horror is far more terrifying and insidious to me than a ghost, demon, or vampire could ever be, and it's something that has captured my attention for years. Shirley Jackson uses the idea of ​​a sentient, malevolent house that she desperately seeks to consume and will do anything to achieve her goals of portraying haunted houses and their effect on the human psyche in The Haunting of Hill House. All quotes are temporarily blue and italicized Something that has fascinated readers for decades is the way Shirley Jackson portrays haunted houses in a way that is different from many other authors before and after her. Jackson chose to have Hill House itself be the evil entity of the story rather than haunted by something evil. A question that is commonly asked by those who are drawn to this story is: why did Jackson choose Hill House to be alive? The only known answers are simply speculation, but in any case it has raised much discussion on this topic, although it is not the primary focus of those who have read this novel. The main focus that people who read The Haunting of Hill House have is the allure of Hill House's desire to consume and devour.; as well as the question of why Hill House is so evil. Over the course of the novel, we learn the history of Hill House and how it was built, but we never learn how it reached its current state. It is possible to argue that it doesn't matter who built Hill House or when they did it, and all that matters is that Hill House is a powerful force; something that cannot be changed or destroyed and that would exude evil as long as it stood or someone remembered it: “Exorcism cannot alter the appearance of a house; Hill House would remain as it was until it was destroyed.", and that there is nothing anyone or anything could do to change it. One wonders whether or not Hill House has become evil due to all the misfortune of its inhabitants, or whether all the bad luck happened because of the evil nature of the house, "What it was like before then, whether its personality was shaped by the people who lived here, or the things they did, or whether it was evil all along start are all questions I can't answeranswer'. It is revealed that Hill House was built 80 years ago, and yet, in that relatively short period of time, it has inexplicably become extremely powerful and insatiable. Hill House is depicted as a living, sentient creature, hungry and eager to consume. and devour its inhabitants, “I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, he thought, and the monster feels my little movements inside. “No,” he said aloud, and the one word echoed.”, which are weak and just a thing for the House to play with and then eat. Something many readers wonder is whether Hill House feeds or less than misery. It is a debatable question since it is unclear whether the House feeds exclusively on misery and suffering or whether it needs an influx of people to keep it alive. Furthermore, the question has arisen whether Hill House really needs to consume its victims or simply likes to play and play with its victims, for some form of sick and malevolent joy. It seems that the House needs to devour people to survive and thrive, but takes pleasure in attracting more and more victims and in 'evoke the misery within them, and in playing cruelly with them to get what he wants he manages to isolate the unfortunate coincidence of line and place that suggests the evil in front of a house, and yet somehow a manic juxtaposition, a. badly turned corner, a chance meeting between roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of desperation, more frightening For the face of Hill House seemed awake, with an attention from the empty windows and a touch of joy in the eyebrow of a cornice . “It is a matter of curiosity why Hill House wants some people and not others, but one reason proposed is that Hill House feeds on the vulnerable and weak, finds the most fragile people and seeks to destroy them for its own benefit, “The home was waiting now, he thought, and it was waiting for her; no one else could satisfy him.” Some people who pass through the walls of Hill House are simply the kind of people Hill House doesn't like: those who are too strong-willed, or too sure of themselves. themselves, or ignorant; most are victims in some way or are useful to advance the House's agenda moment and looked at HELP ELEANOR, COME HOME ELEANOR written in trembling red letters on the wallpaper above Theodora's bed,” although the writing frightened and shocked Eleanor, it was evidence that one of Eleanor's desires was being fulfilled: the desire to be desired and to have a place to belong. Hill House preys on people who are already vulnerable and focuses on them because it knows it will be easier to wear them down and claim them as victims. Although Hill House is a force of evil, it is still a house and cannot kill its prey through typical violent means, so Hill House does not kill people, it forces and forces them to commit suicide: “In the interminable incident, a moment before the car crashed into the tree, he thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?”. Eleanor also feels a certain form of pride in the fact that she is killing herself "on her own", which is really just the influence of Hill Houses in making her stronger than ever. However, right before Eleanor kills herself, the House relinquishes control and influence over her mind to torment her with the fact that Hill House has won and that it is too late for her or anyone else to save her. Hill House manages to infiltrate the minds of its victims and change their perception of reality and what they value: “I will renounce possession of this self of mine, I will abdicate, I will willingly give up what I never wanted; anyonewhatever he wants from me, he can have it.”. Hill House plays with its victims and makes them want to stay, an example of this is when Eleanor loses sight of reality when others try to make her leave and starts talking about being walled in alive and wanting to stay home. He is also able to convince his victims that things happening outside the House are inconsequential and make them seem unimportant and imaginary: "We're on a desert island," Luke said. "I can't imagine any world except Hill House," Eleanor said., even if it means they forget the people who were once important to them. Towards the end of the novel, the grip of the House truly takes hold of Eleanor and causes her to lose sight of reality as she can no longer remember who the other characters are, or what they mean to her, or how they met. Eleanor has always been imaginative and had a slightly loose grip on reality, but the House makes her much more tenuous and tense, and really warps Eleanor's mind so that she has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. It even gets to the point where the House has so thoroughly and completely infiltrated Eleanor's mind that she thinks, by dying and remaining in the House, that she will finally have "deserved" the happiness she had wanted her whole life but had eluded her .“ Eleonora laughed. “But I can't leave,” he said, wondering where to find the words to explain. “Something rather fascinating is the effect that haunted houses have on the human psyche. In real life and in fiction, when people enter a haunted house (or what they perceive as a haunted house) their response of fight or flight, mainly due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of their situation, which typically fills people with anxiety. The instinctive and very human response of desperately trying to survive, by any means necessary, is especially pertinent here novel. "Fear," said the doctor, "is the abandonment of logic, the willful abandonment of reasonable patterns." We surrender to it or fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.' capable of using his victims' fear against them and turning it into a weapon.Hill House's effect on EleanorHill House distorts and corrupts the emotions and minds of anyone who inhabits it, the house is capable of changing the perception of people's lives and how they should act; he amplifies certain thoughts and emotions to manipulate his inhabitants into giving him what he wants. Eleanor is the weakest and most vulnerable of the characters, and Hill House easily distorts and amplifies her emotions, turning her into a more unstable and fragile person, closer to the breaking point. One such example is Eleanor's anger, "Nell?" Theodora looked at her and smiled. “I'm really sorry, you know,” he said. I would like to see her die, Eleanor thought, and she smiled and said, "Don't be silly," the house makes Eleanor cruel and mean, even to Theodora, to whom she has become very fond and makes her behave like an ugly caricature of herself. . Eleanor's obsession also manifests itself quite strongly as Eleanor is truly filled with an obsession, a desire, a need to be desired and to have a place to belong and to escape from the mundane and provincial life that she had led in past, which is something that Hill House takes advantage of, to the point that Eleanor believes, for the first time in her life, that she can be happy and that Hill House is the place where that will happen, all while she is slowly becoming a more victim compliant and available for the Chamber. Eleanor begins to think of others as her family and imagines the life they could have together, especially with Theodora.” Eleanor smiled placidly. "They are notNever been wanted anywhere," she said. Another aspect of Eleanor that Hill House is able to manipulate is her fear. Eleanor is afraid of having nowhere to belong, people who want her, but most of all herself Before reaching Hill House, Eleanor has a vague understanding of who she is, but as the novel progresses and Hill House's hold on her grows stronger, she completely and completely loses her sense of self, which all It pleases her at first because she didn't quite know who she was, but she comes to appreciate it and gets angry because she's losing herself: "There's only one of me, and that's all I have." dissolve and slip and separate so that I live in one half, my mind, and see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can't stop it.' Eleanor also feels she has come to the point where her name is there It's the only thing in her life that belongs to her and is her only connection to who she is, and she can't stand it being abused. lovers meeting, he thought; it was my choice to come." «I would never have suspected it on my own, Eleanor thought, laughing again; everything is different, I'm a new person, far away from home." Eleanor is filled with guilt over her mother's death and her role in it, which is another thing the House uses to its advantage, as Eleanor hears pounding on the wall and assumes it is her sick mother calling her before remembering that she is in Hill House and her mother is dead, which she believes is her fault because she ignored her mother when she called her in the middle of the night before she died Eleanor's desire to escape is something that drives her to Hill House and makes her a particularly vulnerable target, as she has no one who cares about her enough to care about her and she has no one to care about wanting to escape who accepts a strange invitation to go to an equally strange place without too many questions When Eleanor decided to go to Hill House and left, she experienced and appreciated her sense of freedom and the fact that no one had any idea where she was going. or for what reason. Eleanor also relished the thought that no one would be able to catch her, even though she had done nothing to justify anyone trying to catch her. Hill House was also able to use and manipulate the fact that Eleanor had always felt like an outsider her entire life and that she had some sort of destiny greater than her normal, mundane life awaiting her, and was in able to convince her that Hill House was her destiny and that it was the place she had always waited for. “No one would ever find me there either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I planted oleanders along the way.” The aspect of Eleanor's mind that Hill House is able to control is what she says as well as motivations for speaking, such as when characters share information about themselves Eleanor tells them she lives alone when she lives with her sister and creates a ideal life that tells others what it is made of fragments of his desires and what he saw on his journey to Hill House. In this ideal life of Eleanor, she would be completely unknown and untraceable with no one ever knowing where she is and even said that she would plant oleanders along the road to ensure that no one can access her house and disturb her. The fact that Eleanor had an elaborate dream of a home and a life where she could simply keep people away and be safe reveals a lot about Eleanor's character and her desires. Eleanor also tells the others that she is 34 and not her actual age of 32 for some provocative reason that is unexplained to her, which raises the question of whether the house had already begun to influence and take effect by that point. Hill House is capable of;.