Theme Of House Taken Over

“House Taken Over” by Julio Cortázar is about two middle aged siblings living in their ancestral house together and describes their daily routines during the tragic time when everything was magically taken away from them, including their house by an some entity that represents fear. The story presents the loneliness, love, and the fear that takes place in both Irene and her brother that contributes to the overall depiction of the story. Irene and her brother are presented as very secluded people that don't want to change their lives, unless they are forced to. From the start they both were more introverted because they don’t go out and socialize with people; they also just stay home. They didn’t have jobs because they were given money from …show more content…
In the first half of the short story, the narrator talks about how all he does is read books and all Irene does is knit, besides the necessary cleaning and cooking. He also spends a lot of time talking about how he loves the house they live in and describes the layout of it. The rest of the story, they slowly lose the things they love including their house because of the mysterious noises, “‘I had to shut the door to the passage. They've taken over the back part’” (Cortázar 691), “The first few days were painful, since we’d both left so many things in the part that had been taken over. My collection of French literature, for an example, was …show more content…
However, they were the passive ones in this situation because they worked their lives around the areas that their house was taken over by the noises. It’s like they accepted that their house was going to eventually be taken over and so they lived side by side with this evil. It was like they knew it was gonna happen as if they were waiting for it to happen, “. . . it happened so simply and without fuss” (Cortázar 690). The weird thing is that they don’t move out of their house immediately when these noise enter their house, even though they could have saved many of their things including their money if they did. From my interpretation, they stay in the house because they are more afraid of moving on and changing than facing something evil or bad in their lives. It’s like a constant toss being shown between facing evil and moving on. In the end, they are forced out of their house without any of their belongings or money. Irene and her brother are definitely scared in this story. With the use of these three themes, loneliness, love, and fear, Cortázar’s “House Taken Over” led to my interpretation. The loneliness trait of Irene and her