666 Nomed Avenue: A Short Story

A family indistinguishable from other families in the nation until the other families were told by their government to fear them. The house is a physical representation of what the family went through. The family was mistreated and sent to the camp simply because they were different and the house was mistreated and broken because of who owned it. The words written on the walks could symbolize how being called certain names had a jarring and lasting effect in the children. Just as the words are a symbol so is the broken and dirty glass. The family no longer sees themselves as something beautiful and good. Now they see themselves as something dirty and bad. They no longer look at themselves because they are ashamed at their own genetics. While the house doesn’t have much damage on the outside, it reflects the people that live inside of it. They hide their true emotions and show the world their bravest face, but on the inside strange people they so not know have trampled and ruined

The house is said to be haunted by Dies Drear and two slaves who were killed by bounty hunters. The third slave ran away. The neighbor, an old man named Pluto lives in a nearby cave who acts fishy, almost like two different people. Weird things start to happen to the family like them finding 4 triangles(which the slaves used to use) which makes a Greek cross and the kitchen covered full of flour when the family was gone. Thomas thinks these are the acts of Mr. Pluto. After the incident of the kitchen, however, Thomas and his dad run in the middle of the night to Mr. Pluto's cave, thinking he caused the mess. After finding a secret passage in the cave which is full of jewels and valuable artifacts, Thomas and his dad realize that their were two

Inside the house, it was quite empty. Pure white walls, dark-stained wood flooring, and black furniture. The staircases were wooden and well worn, complementing the intricacies of the shade around the house. Two men walk into the house.

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all the ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are ring and things in the walls. […] that gate at the head of the stairs. ”n the power between him and his wife, possibly a symbolism to what mans’ reaction would be to see women in places of power, especially when the narrator “creeps” over his body. This ‘creeping’ is symbolic of the wives power over her husband when she was able to free herself from the restraints of the home in which she was kept.

Richard, afraid that it might scare away Claude, did not tell him anything about the strange goings-on in the mansion. However, Claude too had a similar experience. As Claude was lying on his back and painting the celling in the dining room, he also couldn’t help feeling the presence of someone watching him at work. He thought that there was someone in the hallway outside the room but he couldn’t find out for sure through the frosted glass doors.

Upon opening the back door, Vasquez observed that there was just enough space to squeeze past the refrigerator blocking the exit. The air smelled of burned rubber and melted wires; a damp ash covered the ground, sticking to their boots. In the kitchen, Vasquez and Fogg discerned only smoke and heat damage—a sign that the fire had not originated there—and so they pushed deeper into the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot building. A central corridor led past a utility room and the master bedroom, then past a small living room, on the left, and the children’s bedroom, on the right, ending at the front door, which opened onto the porch. Vasquez tried to take in everything, a process that he compared to entering one’s mother-in-law’s house for the first time: “I have the same curiosity.”

Danielewski uses the Freud’s uncanny concept to create the feeling of unsettled mystery within the walls of the expanding house. Freud’s definition of uncanny implies that “some things must be added to the novel and unfamiliar if it is to become uncanny.” [insert citation #3] Not only is the house uncanny, but the complicated multi-layered narratives, footnotes and the book itself are just as uncanny. The core story in the House of

Day after day, we would pass the mansion building on our way to and from school. Branches of vines and clusters of moss crawled up the sides of the building. I could see the paint, tearing off the walls. People for years have said the mansion building is haunted, but I don’t believe it. They say people have been possessed and killed there. Olivia, of course, believes every detail anyone tells him. To teach him a lesson, we decided to plan to spend the night in the mansion building this Saturday.

“Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children. We had neither bedsteads nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with boards; a single blanket the only covering.”

“It” was the WORST day of my life! The day I learned terrible, TERRIBLE, things that would scare people no matter how old they are, and how do I know this do you ask, well, I was scared to, I am not anymore because that is how I grew up, cowering in fear but not anymore, not know that I know more than people think and want me to now.

Before the Narrator enters Roderick’s room, he walks through the house and describes it. The Narrator sees the darkness in the house when he notices, “ the ebon blackness of the floors” (Poe 297). He describes a gloomy black floor to give a description of uneasiness and terror for the reader to attribute to the whole house. The Narrator also describes a feeling of a ghost in the house among trophies that are moving, “trophies which rattled as I strode” (Poe 297). This feeling of terror is created for the reader to imagine when he or she felt objects moving, scaring him or her. The rattling that the Narrator notices is something that the reader relates to feeling further creating a single effect for the

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once stated, “No human race is superior; no religious faith inferior. All collective judgements are wrong. Only racists make them.” Imagine being discriminated against for something you couldn’t control; like the way you look or talk, what you believe in or the way you live, how would that make you feel? Now imagine being dehumanized for that something you can’t change. It may sound preposterous, but during the holocaust that’s precisely what happened. The dehumanization of the Jewish midst the Holocaust is vital to learn about because it enlightens us on the unfair bigotry, ghastly living conditions, and how the Jewish had their identity stripped away.

The house symbolically acts as a place of isolation, illustrating the way that if humans no longer have communication with other people it results into madness. The symbol of the house is significant, the house is an isolated place especially near the windows. As the unnamed narrator arrives at the house a servant takes his horse, and he enters the Gothic archway of the hall. As the narrator is lead to Roderick's studio by the servant, he notices the familiar yet gloomy atmosphere. He is put in a room where he describes as large and lofty and "the windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from

concentration away from the trees, which did not freak him at all, and continued his journey up the hill towards the house. Without hesitating, he unlocked the door and went in, as he went in the silent still sinister house, the door slammed shut behind him slowly the gloomy light started fading. A butler appeared from nowhere, he was holding his head under his arms like a ball in his hands. “Jeeves at your service, sir,” he said, creepily. “Follow me.” “Thank you, my good man,” said Titan excitingly, handing him his coat and following him up the creaking staircase without blinking an eye.