Like Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the house in Cortázar’s short story “House Taken Over” is a family house. “We liked the house, because, apart from it being old and spacious (in a day when old houses go down for a profitable auction off their construction materials), it kept the memories of great-grandparents, our paternal grandfather, our parents and the whole childhood”(128). The formation of the main characters, siblings like in Poe’s story, and their connection to the house is the foundation for Cortázar’s narrative. The brother and sister live within the house in a state of continual dullness, going about their hobbies and interests with no real purpose. The narrator, the brother, simply lives the convenient bachelor
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Though readers are given a somewhat ambiguous layout of the house, Cortázar is careful to note that the infamous door in the middle of the house to readers. “I hurled myself against the door before it was too late and shut it, leaned on it with the weight of my body; luckily, the key was on our side;…” (13). Until that moment the narrator found the door ajar, leading to the initial contact to the unknown, the story almost withers away along with the two siblings into insignificance. The door is made out to be the first barrier between siblings, and the nameless voices beyond the barrier. When the narrator attempts to slam the door between the two worlds, creating a barrier, it creates a foundation of separation between the two spaces in the house, as the siblings continue to go about the lives, only slightly inconvenienced that some unknown presence has now possessed half of their …show more content…
Though shrouded in ambiguity, these two writers crafted such details as to explore the everyday reality of the house in all its details by way of the alarming instrument of fear. Roderick fears inheriting the family madness, only to have his fear conquer him in the form of his sister, drawing upon the fears of inheritance, past sins, as readers are left to comprehend the narrator’s own conclusions to the tale. As one reads the stories by Cortázar, it becomes evident that the implementation of the fantastic elements are built into the narrative as vital to the solution of the conflicts in the stories, but also as vehicles in which the characters must interact with in ways that transform them by the last page. Both Poe and Cortázar appear to challenge readers to consider the concept of the house as a known space, a space of safety and security that many other narratives portray may also be a space that may not be completely safe, a space the may not be secure, as it was not for them. The house, both as space still idealized, Poe and Cortázar created narratives that dared to ask new questions and let readers find the answers to what it could mean for a house to be
Though readers are given a somewhat ambiguous layout of the house, Cortázar is careful to note that the infamous door in the middle of the house to readers. “I hurled myself against the door before it was too late and shut it, leaned on it with the weight of my body; luckily, the key was on our side;…” (13). Until that moment the narrator found the door ajar, leading to the initial contact to the unknown, the story almost withers away along with the two siblings into insignificance. The door is made out to be the first barrier between siblings, and the nameless voices beyond the barrier. When the narrator attempts to slam the door between the two worlds, creating a barrier, it creates a foundation of separation between the two spaces in the house, as the siblings continue to go about the lives, only slightly inconvenienced that some unknown presence has now possessed half of their …show more content…
Though shrouded in ambiguity, these two writers crafted such details as to explore the everyday reality of the house in all its details by way of the alarming instrument of fear. Roderick fears inheriting the family madness, only to have his fear conquer him in the form of his sister, drawing upon the fears of inheritance, past sins, as readers are left to comprehend the narrator’s own conclusions to the tale. As one reads the stories by Cortázar, it becomes evident that the implementation of the fantastic elements are built into the narrative as vital to the solution of the conflicts in the stories, but also as vehicles in which the characters must interact with in ways that transform them by the last page. Both Poe and Cortázar appear to challenge readers to consider the concept of the house as a known space, a space of safety and security that many other narratives portray may also be a space that may not be completely safe, a space the may not be secure, as it was not for them. The house, both as space still idealized, Poe and Cortázar created narratives that dared to ask new questions and let readers find the answers to what it could mean for a house to be