Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.
Shirley JacksonRead
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the solitude and eerie atmosphere of Hill House, suggesting a deeper commentary on isolation and the human experience.
This quote from Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House' conveys a haunting yet peaceful image of a house that stands firm and silent, embodying a sense of isolation. The detailed description of its structure serves as a metaphor for emotional and psychological barriers, hinting at the idea that even in well-constructed environments, the feeling of being alone can persist, and whatever resides within may be lonely and restless.
In practice
As an introduction to a discussion about isolation in literature.
Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else.
It watches," he added suddenly. "The house. It watches every move you make.
There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.
I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.
I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
Where are my sensations? They have melted into... me, and what is this me, this self, but the sum of these evaporated sensations?
Menstruation not only carries with it the connotation of a productive system that has failed to produce; it also carries the idea of production gone awry, making products of no use, not to specification, unsalable, wasted, scrap.
Don't let people tell you to do it this way. You are on the verge of figuring out hybrid models -- with companies and nonprofits, markets, government, crowd-sourced philanthropy. The capitalist system as we know it is not working.
Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.
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