House of Day, House of Night
72 pages • 2-hour read
Olga Tokarczuk, Transl. Antonia Lloyd-JonesHouse of Day, House of Night
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of illness, death, and cannibalism.
Borderlands as an Ontological Condition
House of Day, House of Night, primarily explores the lives of people living in the Polish region of Silesia, a former German territory close to the border of the Czech Republic. Classified as a borderland, the border is important not only politically, but personally as well, with characters defining themselves and their lives through the nation they live in, reflecting borderlands as an ontological condition.
Tokarczuk’s narrator lives near the border, observing different kinds of border crossings throughout the novel. Despite her proximity, she struggles to recognize the legitimacy of the border, seeing it not as a rigid line but a fictional boundary preserved by men. She often crosses the border, wandering through the woods. Therefore, she does not fully recognize the authority of the border guard, instead pretending as if they are protecting something else: “We’ve gotten used to being watched day and night by the border guards […] dozens of men in uniform guard the weed-choked strip of land where raspberries grow large and fragrant with no fear of being uprooted. It would be easier for us to believe they were guarding the raspberries” (78). These raspberries demonstrate how the border constructs the narrator’s perception of her home. She pretends as though the guards protect the raspberries, large and fragrant from the lack of human intervention. With this view, the narrator does not see a border, but a precious resource she would otherwise take advantage of. It prevents her from shrinking her world, living as though there is a wall at her back that she cannot pass through without permission.
Germany’s legacy in the novel is a complicated one, as it demonstrates how the changing border leaves former residents lost, and present ones confused. When Peter Dieter, an elderly German man, returns to the village of his youth, he sees a different place. He climbs to the border between the Czech Republic and Poland, and dies, leaving border guards from both nations unsure of what to do. Not knowing where he is from, the guards take turns moving him from one side of the border to the other, making Peter feel in motion, despite his death: “So, before his soul had departed forever, this was how Peter Dieter remembered his death as a mechanical movement one way, then the other, like teetering on the edge, like standing on a bridge” (104-05). The simile that compares Peter’s death to that of swaying back and forth on an unstable surface reflects how his identity changes over time, adapting to the changing borders. Though he is in the place he grew up in, he dies in what is now a foreign country to him. This becomes more apparent as the guards deny responsibility, hoping that the other nation will act. Peter is untethered, his identity in flux even after his death, because he is unsure of where he belongs.
Borders thus define space, and allow characters to form their identities in relation to their local community, landscape, and nation. In this area of Poland, the border offers its residents and visitors an ever-changing sense of who they are and what is around them.
The Coexistence of the Living Alongside the Dead
The complicated history of this borderland region creates a space in which opposing forces often coexist. Complex national histories exist side-by-side, while the border does little to separate them. This is also true with the natural world and spirituality, with the narrator and other characters often witnessing the coexistence of the living alongside the dead.
The exploration of life and death existing side-by-side is one that mirrors the exploration of identity in House of Day, House of Night. While characters struggle to understand who they are, they also consider life and death, working to accept that they will experience both. The narrator focuses on this more than any other character, often experiencing a chilling fear of death itself. She explores the balance of life and death through a mushroom that, while not deadly poisonous, does attack the body. While this makes it safe to eat, others refuse: “[B]y eating these mushrooms you will end up both alive and dead simultaneously, a certain percentage alive and a certain percentage dead. It is hard to say at what point one passes into the other. For some reason people attach great weight to this one, brief moment of either-or” (188). The narrator refuses to give the mushroom an identity of good or bad, accepting both life and death. Her own body becomes a borderland: She knows that the mushroom will negatively impact her, but not so much that she will notice or feel the need to not enjoy it. She often wonders why so many refuse to recognize death, despite its omnipresence, limiting their approach to life.
Marta also notes the coexistence of life and death. Having lived in the area for a long time, she is familiar with the land around her, and sees the seasonal and cyclical nature of life and death in the forest. When she wakes from her winter hibernation, she ventures into an orchard, and witnesses how the season changed it: “The lush orchard, rich in tall grass and large cushions of greenery, as she remembered it, was no longer there. Now it resembled a graveyard. The bare trees looked like crosses, and the sheaves of flattened grass like graves” (308). Marta perceives the barren orchard, devoid of leaves and fruit because of winter, as a graveyard, with the trees themselves experiencing both life and death. Strengthening the relationship between life and death in this scene is the knowledge that the discarded leaves and dead grass will, over time, nurture the growth of new plant life and fuel the trees’ growth in the spring.
The coexistence of life and death is another example of how the novel explores the mystery and magic of borderlands. It uses the competing forces to create a space in which the unknown and magical can happen, supporting the novel as a work of magical realism.
The Use of Folklore to Challenge Reality
In House of Day, House of Night folklore and the stories of saints challenge reality, both in the present and in the past. These accounts of fantastical and otherwise unexplainable happenings exist in a space in which what is thought to be impossible becomes reality, forcing a reconsideration of the world and history.
Many instances of folklore in the novel surround narratives of World War II, a time of violence, upheaval, and changing borders. In one story, villagers confront a monster hiding in their pond. In the aftermath of the war, and the changing of the border, the monster acts out. When the villagers try to kill it, the monster retaliates by eating a woman, only to be killed itself afterward. To do this, the villagers drain the pond, which is never replenished. After the monster’s death, the villagers discover that it had a mate on the other side of the border: “[T]he villagers heard a dismal wailing from the woods on the Czech side of the border […] in the dried-up pond they found the dead body of a female monster, who had come through the woods and meadows and over the state border in search of her beloved” (153-54). This story captures the sense of hostility and fragmentation in the aftermath of the borders changing. The monster finds itself trapped, surrounded by strangers, and separated from its mate by a new border. The monster cannot coexist with these villagers, but does not leave.
Folklore also challenges established narratives through the exploration of trauma. With many in the area having lived through World War II, characters are often burdened with a traumatic past. Ergo Sum was imprisoned in the USSR and had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Though he accepted this as necessary at the time, he later finds himself haunted by his actions, and an excerpt from Plato gives him a form of atonement: “He stopped dead as he read it and absorbed its meaning: ‘He who has tasted human entrails must become a wolf.’ Yes, that’s exactly what it said” (202). Ergo Sum begins experiencing lycanthropy, and becomes a werewolf. It is a fantastical response to his very real and harrowing experiences, allowing him an outlet for any guilt he experiences. The notion that his past actions result in a union with nature such as this, also offers a counter-narrative to that of religion. Rather than atoning through prayer and faith, Ergo Sum confronts his past through myth. His lycanthropy is not a punishment to be served so much as the result of his actions, giving him a new, albeit painful, way to process his past.
Folklore plays an important role in the novel by exploring history through an alternate lens. Through the fantastical, reality is challenged, offering new ways of thinking about the world and drawing attention to the various ways of experiencing existence.
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