52 pages • 1 hour read
Mark Z. DanielewskiHouse Of Leaves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
The first section of Chapter 13, “The Wait,” begins from the perspective of the school teacher, Teppet Brookes. She observes both Chad and Daisy’s drawings of their house and suspects abuse. Chad’s picture consists of a “black square filling ninety percent of the page” and “marauding creatures” in the margins (313). Daisy’s drawing contains a black-and-blue box with the same wolves, tigers, and dragons as Chad’s. When Chad and Daisy miss school, Brookes drives to their house and comes in to witness the “slaughterhouse” of the aftermath of the rescue mission (314).
A sheriff comes to investigate but quickly gives up after entering the hallway. Tom and Billy go back into the hallway to investigate but find it terminates only thirty feet in. Tom drinks heavily over the next several days, goes in again, and finds the hallway is now only ten feet long. On the morning of the fifth day, Will emerges from the hallway. Karen tells him that she is leaving. Wax eventually recovers from his injuries.
In the second section, “Holloway,” Zampanò examines Holloway’s “madness” (323). He provides notes from Holloway’s former psychiatrist, Nancy Tobe, detailing Holloway’s depression and suicidal ideations. Holloway loses his love in high school, causing great sadness. He also shoots a doe, which makes him feel guilty.
The next section is “The Holloway Tape,” which is a transcript and description of the footage Holloway films. Holloway admits to shooting Wax and Jed. He keeps repeating his own name and talks about something that is “stalking [him]” (335). He then shoots himself. The camera picks up a “terrible growl” (338).
The last section, “Escape,” details the family exiting the house. Karen and Will start packing, and Will starts loading up the car. There is a grinding and a knocking from behind the barricaded hallway door. When Karen is in the bedroom, it “begins to collapse,” and Will comes in to save her (341). He goes back in for Chad and Daisy, but, while on the first floor, the floor collapses and he hangs onto a door knob, so as not to fall. He jumps and saves Billy, bringing him out to the car. Tom rescues Daisy from upstairs and manages to get her out through the kitchen window. The floor keeps moving backwards, and Tom cannot make it out. A vertical shaft appears, and Tom “tumbles into blackness” (346). Chad makes it to the car.
In Johnny’s footnotes, Lude comes to his apartment in mid-September; the two have not seen each other since June. Lude tells Johnny to throw the manuscript and all the materials in his apartment away and offers Johnny pot. Johnny refuses; Lude leaves him with his lighter.
Johnny realizes that he must either finish his writing project or else make use of the gun he bought.
Johnny recalls a violent experience with his foster father, Raymond, in which Raymond hits him in a stairway. 13-year-old Johnny decides to “befriend guile” and play along with Raymond, all the while planning his escape to Alaska (325). Raymond dies from cancer by the time Johnny is 16.
Chapter 14 Summary
This chapter focuses on Karen and her extramarital affairs. A year before she moves with Will to the house on Ash Tree Lane, she meets an actor in New York named Fowler, and they begin an affair. After Karen moves out of the house and returns to New York, she calls Fowler and they have three or four assignations. Will has promised to return to New York after going to Lowell to take care of Tom’s things, but he does not return as promised. Many men admire Karen and make advances; it is unclear whether she has affairs with any others.
Karen’s sister, Linda, alleges that their father sexually assaulted them as teenagers, but Karen never confirms this.
In his footnotes, Johnny mentions that Kyrie’s boyfriend, Gdansk Man, is back in town and has left a threatening message on his voicemail. In response to the letters that Karen keeps, Johnny notes he has one of his own, which he keeps in a locket shaped like a deer. The locket belonged to his mother, and she leaves it to him when she dies. Inside the locket is a letter 11-year-old Johnny wrote to her, and it is a “love letter disguised as a thank you note” (351).
Chapter 15 Summary
Four months after leaving the house, Karen has not seen Will, nor is she in contact with him in anyway. He is still in Charlottesville, Virginia with Billy performing experiments related to the house. Will has shipped all of his film to Karen, and she cuts together a thirteen-minute film detailing Exploration #4 in the hallway. She sends the film out to “famous people Navy knew” (354).
“A Partial Transcript of What Some Have Thought” contains the opinions of several people regarding the film. Karen interviews various critics, writers, psychiatrists, and architects to discuss their takes. She references several true-to-life personalities, such as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Harold Bloom, Camille Paglia, and others. Some give her scientific answers while others approach the film aesthetically. While some criticize the filming choices, others give praise.
Karen makes another six-minute-film entitled A Brief History of Who I Love, which contains pictures from Will’s childhood as well as pictures he shoots during wartime. One picture shows a “Sudanese child dying of starvation,” and on the back is written “Delial” (368). Will has called out this name in his sleep before and never explained it.
Johnny tries to contact the people in Karen’s transcript but only hears back from Hofstadter, who denies any knowledge of the film.
Thumper calls to invite Johnny over, but he refuses. The phone company cuts off his phone service.
Chapter 16 Summary
Zampanò examines “the house as it relates purely to itself” (370). Will collects wall samples and has them analyzed at a lab in Virginia. Zampanò begins to provide the analysis of scientist Dr. O’Greery, then two pages are missing, followed by pages filled with X’s, then seventeen more pages are missing. When the text picks back up, O’Greery says everything is normal except the “chronology,” with some samples dating back billions of years and others a few thousand (378).
Johnny explains that he left a bottle of ink on top of Chapter 16, and it leaked onto the pages, which accounts for the X’s. Johnny wonders what would have happened if he went to a specialist to analyze his condition.
He recalls his mother, who used to write him letters. In one letter, she apologizes for trying to choke him when he is 7. Johnny buys a rifle.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
These chapters continue the trend of narrative instability. This exists on the textual level. In Zampanò’s accounts, some words and letters are missing, denoted by brackets, such as “Flint would [ ] test [ ]while both” (332). Johnny attributes this to ash landing on the pages and burning the text away. Zampanò also tries to black out certain passages with tar, which Johnny denotes with X’s. In Chapter 16, Johnny admits that it is his fault when passages are marked with X’s, since he has spilled ink on them. In this way, both Zampanò and Johnny make the text less legible. Though the original writing exists theoretically, the reader cannot absorb it because the author and the editor get in the way. Thus, the narrative makes itself all the more unstable, illegible, and open to interpretation.
Narrative instability is also apparent in Karen’s transcript. She supposedly interviews and films well known people—Johnny tries to contact these people, but receives no helpful responses. In the world of the text, Karen alleges that famous people react to a film that potentially does not exist. On a higher level, most of these people are “real,” like Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick. In this way, the text becomes even more unreliable by quoting a “real” person in a false way.
Johnny, as a narrator and editor, becomes less stable because his mental and physical state are deteriorating. He has been isolating himself more and more and has not seen his best friend, Lude, for months. When Lude drops by, he describes Johnny as “weird” and “scary” (324). Though Johnny has been obsessing over Thumper for months, he refuses her invitation to come visit her. Whereas this would have fulfilled a strong desire for him before, Johnny is now not able to overcome what is keeping him in his apartment. As Johnny deteriorates further, the narrative becomes less and less stable, and the reader trusts him less.
