the heart of house of leaves

the heart of house of leaves

“‘God was stronger than me when he made Adam and didn’t fall in love with him’” (Hazelthorn, 345).

Pelafina’s relationship with Johnny is, in one word, intense. Each letter she sent him is increasingly erratic and, although she wasn’t physically there, she still somehow parentified him. Her mentality depended on Johnny’s replies, she’d become desperate and volatile the moment she felt Johnny reaching away from her. Her lack of control in Whalestoe only heightened this, as it increased her need for control with her son.While reading her letters, it was easy to forget Johnny was in his tweens/early teens despite the way she talked to him like another adult. Although her word-choices could feel like a mother just caring for her son in any way she could while away, they feel darker the more you think about what she said.Pelafina is desperate to be saved. Whether from her mind, Whalestoe, her aggressors (albeit real or not), or even herself, it’s clear that she viewed Johnny as the person to save her. She wanted Johnny to travel to the underworld(Whalestoe) in search of her, to bring her back. He was her Orpheus, despite also being her son. With the death of his father, and the fact that even when he was alive, Pelafina felt second to flying in Donnie’s heart, she was quick to fill the hole Donnie left with Johnny himself.The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is essentially always deemed romantic, regardless of which telling is being talked about. The fact is that Orpheus does not turn around out of lack of love, but an abundance of it. He loved Eurydice so much he could not help but turn to make sure she was behind him. Shelving the romantic aspect of the myth, Pelafina herself acknowledges the story after Johnny has visited her. She says that "[t]he 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” (604). It is almost as if she is holding Johnny to a higher bar than Orpheus, even though she mentions it because she felt he did so for a negative reason, it still holds an almost scolding-tone. It reads similarly to her other letters where she is upset over Johnny not replying, but is saying so very passive aggressively.Orpheus and Eurydice is a pretty well-known myth, especially with the Broadway musical Hadestown, but to put your son in the role of Orpheus, and yourself in the role of Eurydice, is… bizarre enough to raise some eyebrows. It is an inherently romantic myth and, although it can, theoretically, work with motherly love, that is not what it is about, in the end.The Oedipus complex is commonly brought to mind when thinking of mother-son relationships that feel… strange, although in this case it feels entirely on the mother’s side, not the son’s. However, Pelafina’s surname is Lièvre, which is French for “rabbit” or “hare.” Johnny talks at length about a stripper named after the rabbit from Bambi, Thumper. However, this does not particularly lead to the idea that he held the same passion as Pelafina, but instead that she had instilled this way of thinking to think of her, and things to do with her, in that way. Similarly to the Pavlov effect.Pelafina had a habit of saying things that seemed innocent, but held strange or unnerving connotations and emotions invoked. She often related him to a feline, specifically “her cub,” which felt like it made sense with how she, essentially, raised him to a young age then disappeared on him, like mother lions do. However, in nature, lions do this because of competition to be the leader as well as to ensure inbreeding does not happen. She also consistently told Johnny how mature he was, how much older he seemed, even so much as saying that she “keep[s] forgetting [he is] only eleven and [goes] on treating [him] like a grown man” (590).Each letter has a signature that grows increasingly intimate and extreme, such as “I am truly only yours” (623) and one of note, “My darling J, I remain your only Mary” (611). At first, this seems to be about the Virgin Mary, making Johnny her Jesus, her son. But there was another Mary in Jesus’ life, Mary Magdalene. It is said that she was a follower/disciple, but also possibly a lover. She is also mentioned in the novel again, a quote of hers in Latin, while the Virgin Mary not mentioned once. There is a moment where Pelafina even says that Johnny is more beautiful than his father, her deceased husband. Or even when she says she was blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl over Johnny. She is simultaneously regressing herself and parentifying her barely-teenaged son.All of this is to say, having this intense relationship with his mother most certainly paved the pathway for the rest of his relationships in the book. We have yet to see him have a romantic relationship, instead many one-night stands and flings that are indicative of the lasting effect his mother had on him. While it also, of course, is due to his mental state in the moment and his loneliness, his mother most definitely was a partial cause for this distinct lack of romantic connection. His mental state most definitely was a large aspect of it, but the way that his mother treated him so romantically, it is not hard to understand why he would be a bit averse to romance as an adult, especially when his mentality was already unraveling.One could argue that Pelafina is the heart of this novel, in many different ways. Due to her lasting impression on Johnny himself, the theories of her being the author and Johnny not even existing, even to the fact that she seemed to somehow have known Zampano himself. She will always have a piece of herself in Johnny, even if it is just through their shared mental illness. Without Pelafina, a lot of the story would not exist, if not most of it. So she truly is the heart of House of Leaves.

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Hello Professor!I know that I didn’t have to write an essay on top of the heart sculpture, but the last multi-modal essay was certainly not my best work. I was dealing with some severe medicinal issues and was barely able to think a sentence, let alone write an essay, so I wanted to really put my all into this to show that I can do a lot better. I’m not expecting extra credit or anything of the like, I just wanted you to know that that wasn’t close to my best work. Thank you, and I hope your retirement is lovely. I’m so glad I got to take this class.Charles

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