The Staircase in the Woods

In the novel, houses serve as a motif that emphasizes The Duality of “Home.” Houses often mirror the people who live inside them. Just as a relationship between two humans can bring either pleasure or pain, houses have the same potential. As the avatar of the sentient house states, “I was a place of promise. Not merely a house, but a home. A place of love, a place of family […] but that man brought back all the pain of war […] The pain in us was electric and alive, it flowed through us like a boiling river” (371). In the world of the novel, single-family houses thus become uniquely private spaces in which mental illness and trauma sometimes grow unchecked. In this way, houses either are synonymous with safety and love or become linked to feelings of hurt and fear. The main characters’ homes are places that harbor more pain than happiness, and as Nick asserts, such fear-tainted homes can become “part of your very identity—your house, your home, is part of the tapestry that is you. You carry it with you, in your heart, to the end of things” (337). Because the link between one’s house and oneself is emotional, this connection can be either joyful or devastating.