The Maze of Human Relationships.

I think I mentioned a little whiles back that I had read a profound and disturbing [and profoundly disturbing] book entitled House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. When I had first read it, I wanted to write about it here because there seemed to be so much to investigate about it on my Mythology blog.

But I had difficulty synthesizing the core meaning that I wanted to draw out from it. It was elusive. It wasn't elusive in the same way that The Last Unicorn was. No, that novel did not attempt to hide meaning, but it skirted on the edge of actual understanding. The house, however, does hide, and it conceals. It is not the joyous mystery of the unicorn, but the terrifying mystery of ... a house.

What makes a house terrifying? In House of Leaves, it is not so much about a creepy building that haunts and destroys and perturbs the intellect. Rather, I would like to consider the house as a metaphor for human relationships. This is not a whimsical idea, but founded on something that the author himself said:

"I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, 'You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.' And she's absolutely right." 

            (from the article "Profile: Mark Z. Danielewski," Flak Magazine)

The house is a maze and a mess, and it is a symbol not only for Will Navidson's broken relationship with Karen, but also for Johnny Truant's broken relationships with his family and with women. The house is dangerous, and those relationships are also dangerous and hurtful. Perhaps the major story behind House of Leaves is that human relationships are difficult and... labyrinthine. That we are the minotaurs in the midst of our own interrelated lives.

(I made a similar claim about Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy as well; that is, that the metaphorical // typological interpretation holds the core truth of the novel.)

In general, houses can be messes. They are symbols for where we dwell, for where family exists. For most people, the house (= the home) is where they receive their first major soul-wound, it is where they have their first encounter with evil, it is where they first lose their sense of innocence. And the house in House of Leaves is no different.


And... I think about this claim -- that is, the claim that human relationships are labyrinths that are dangerous to navigate, that we bring into every human interaction some deep, inner, hidden monster [= minotaur] that might bring destruction -- and I see that, in many senses, it holds true. Human relationships are mazes that can be difficult and dangerous to navigate. The ancients used to illustrate this by making garden-labyrinths which they could walk through in order to better understand themselves. St. Augustine once said that the human soul is like a giant cavern; Nietzche once said that the darkness might stare back.

(Of course, that is assuming that there is no light to see in the darkness. Pointedly, all of the characters in House of Leaves are flying blind. Their flashlights eventually fail in the darkness, Zampanò is a blind man [supposedly because of the monster], and Johnny is perpetually confused and directionless. St. Augustine had something that they did not: he had an eternal Candle [= The Holy Spirit].)

House of Leaves is about that maze of human relationships, about the difficulty of what family [= the house] is, about the complexity of the labyrinth of human hearts, and about the dangers lurking within our own hearts. And, in some sense, the story is incomplete. It leaves some questions unanswered and some ponderings unconsidered. It leaves Johnny still a mess, and Navidson as a physical mess [albeit, in some manner, whole emotionally], and no one really knows who Zampanò was. But, as a postmodern instant-classic, it's allowable that those loose ends are left. In life, loose ends get left all of the time. In relationships, things aren't always clear and understandable. Sometimes things get confusing.


One last thought: Clearly, Danieleski's masterpiece is a clear picture of fallen human relationships. But, I wonder, if human relationships might be naturally complex? What if the maze was always something that needed to be processed, even if the minotaurs are dead and no monster ever brought darkness or sin into the world of relationships; what if humanity, being made in the image of God, has always been complex, and, thus, in need of process in relationships?

There are some clear theological consequences for these thoughts -- but they are a continuation of a thought-experiment on the complexity of humanity that I have been considering lately.

All this being said, humans are complex beings with complex relationships, and it may well be impossible to map out fully the interiors of our souls -- being, as they are, like the house, always in flux -- but it is possible for us to fight our minotaurs. Perhaps, as we fight the monsters, navigate the maze, and begin to communicate with one another, we will begin to enter into true relationship with our fellow man.