 | House of Leaves: Encyclopedia II - House of Leaves - Mythological references
House of Leaves - Mythological references
House of Leaves - The Minotaur
Throughout the explorations of the Navidson house, an unnevering, low growl seems to follow the explorers. This growl is implicitly associated with the Minotaur of Greek mythology, thus making the house a form of the labyrinth of the Palace of Crete—and Navidson as Theseus, complete with his flares in place of a spool of thread.
The growl eventually seems to be revealed as a noise accompanying the destruction of inanimate and dead matter within the Navidson house. The house naturally cleans itself of everything except living humans; ropes and other objects, along with corpses, are destroyed by the "Minotaur," and living animals seem to be immediately rejected by the house, and are transported out of the house into the front lawn whenever they enter it.
However, the Minotaur also seems to be a presence in the story beyond this, if only in the minds of the characters; it is implied by a set of strange gashes in the floor of Zampanò's apartment that the Minotaur somehow killed Zampanò, and Truant is subsequently haunted by paranoid fantasies of being pursued by a horrible monster. This may reflect an actual menacing supernatural force surrounding Zampanò and his work, or it may be a psychological projection of the fears of the characters onto the void, imagining horrible things where there is nothing, and thus creating their own monsters; a similar theory is one of the most popular explanations for how and why the house reacts to humans as it does.
The Minotaur is explicitly mentioned only in a number of digressions in The Navidson Record in which Zampanò explores the mythological concept, much as he took the time to explore the mythology (as well as the science) behind the echo. These passages are immediately noteworthy because they are all either in red text or appear as struck passages (like this), depending on the version of the book. This device is apparently to reflect passages which Zampanò attempted to destroy, but which Truant was able to restore. Zampanò's reason for trying to blot out all mentioning of the Minotaur is never explained, though Truant speculates that it was a final, desperate attempt to escape the beast that would soon kill him.
House of Leaves - Orpheus and Eurydice
The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is another myth subtly referenced in the book. The themes of the myth are certainly comparable to many of those in House of Leaves, with Navidson traveling to a gloomy "underworld" of sorts, driven to madness by Delial rather than Eurydice, though Navidson's ending is less tragic. One could also interpret the myth's relationship to the Navidson Record in the opposite way: with Navidson, who becomes trapped in the house, as Eurydice, and his wife Karen, who confronts her claustrophobia and returns to the house to save him, as an Orpheus of sorts who actually succeeds in rescuing her love.
Orpheus is briefly mentioned by Truant in Footnote 34 on page 28, from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke called "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes." However, the myth is most obviously acknowledged in Pelafina's letters. On page 604, Pelafina compares her son to Orpheus as follows:
"The way you turned your back on your mother and only looked back twice, not that twice shouldn't have been more than enough, after all once was too much for Orpheus, but your lookings seemed to signal in my heart some message of mortal wrong."
This comparison of Orpheus to Truant, and thus Pelafina to Eurydice (and the Institution to the underworld) is arguably sustained by what most fans consider a subtler reference to the myth on page 628, which includes the words "or free us with a glance" ("Orpheus with a glance") and "you rid a sea with dance" ("Eurydice with dance"). This interpretation is supported by the line "and banish love to verse," as Orpheus was most legendary for both his love, "banished" when he failed to save Eurydice, and for his song and poetry.
The page also includes the lines "for an only child is the chance / to end this wicked curse-", possibly another plea from Pelafina for her son to save her from the "underworld."
House of Leaves - Yggdrasil
There are numerous references to Yggdrasil, the great world-tree of Norse mythology, in House of Leaves, and some believe that the house itself is meant to be a representation of that tree, with the enormous, elaborate labyrinth as its roots.
The most obvious reference to this mythological archetype is that Navidson's house is located on Ash Tree Lane. In older versions of House of Leaves, the house was originally situated on Oak Tree Lane, and it was presumably changed as the Yggdrasil imagery rose in prominence.
Yggdrasil, and trees in general, may also serve the function of unifying a central theme and metaphor of House of Leaves: the comparison of books (such as House of Leaves itself, and The Navidson Record) and houses (such as Navidson's house); trees are used in the creation of both wooden houses and paper for books.
Also, the pages of a book are often called the "leaves" of a book, thus making the actual book a house of leaves.
Other related archives1948, 1954, 1958, 1978, 1998, 2000, Ann Danielewski, Ash Tree, Camille Paglia, Courier, Dante Alighieri, Dien Bien Phu, Divine Comedy, Edgar Allan Poe, Eurydice, Federico Fellini, French, French Foreign Legion, French Indochina, German, Greek myth, Greek mythology, Haunted, Hell, Hello, Homer, Inferno, Internet, Italian, Jacques Derrida, Jorge Luis Borges, Ken Burns, Kevin Carter, La Strada, Latin, Liberty Bell, Library of Congress, Los Angeles, March 7, Mark Z. Danielewski, Milorad Pavić, Minotaur, Norse mythology, Oak Tree, Old English, Orpheus, Palace of Crete, Pantheon Books, Rainer Maria Rilke, SOS, Spanish, Stephen King, String Quartet No. 16 in F major, The Battle of Maldon, The Garden of Forking Paths, The Seafarer, The Whalestoe Letters, Theseus, Times, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Virgil, Virginia, Winchester Mystery House, World War II, Yggdrasil, academic criticism, album, allusion, ash tree, battle of Dien Bien Phu, bestseller, blind, blue, blue screen, braille, check, claustrophobic, cult following, documentary film, echo, editors, ergodic literature, ethnicity, existentialist, first person, font, footnotes, gold, grey, horror, house, hyperlink, insanity, labyrinth, labyrinthine, labyrinths, leaves, maze, mental institution, minotaur, murder, navy blue, novel, pages, panic attack, paper, photograph, pieces, pisces, projection, purple, reality, red, satire, spiral staircase, supernatural, tattoo, toe, torch, trees, typography, underworld, videotape, wooden
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Mythological references", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
