Monday, November 22, 2010

Code Breaking and Hidden Meaning

In House of Leaves, there are many hidden messages, usually acrostics (often referred to in the community as Pelafina's Code for the use in her letters) that can give a deeper understanding of a character, or the whole book, or sometimes just lead to more layers of questions we have as the reader. For example, chapter VIII contains a lot of Morse code, particularly spelling out SOS, or in many cases, "SO?" At one point the code spells out "FUCK," while on the same page Johnny says "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." 3 short, 3 long, 3 short. SOS.

In footnote 119 though, in response to a "SO?" we find a more hidden Morse code if we look hard enough. There are long and short passages, broken up by dots. Letters are broken up by hollow dots (as we've seen earlier in the chapter). When you puzzle it out, eventually you get: Long Short Short Short/ Short Short Long/ Long/ Long/ Long Long Long/ Long Short/ Short Short Short. This spells "BUTTONS"

So what? Sew Buttons.

At many points I have seen people question how much of the code Danielewski actually put in the book on purpose, and how much has been discovered that he didn't intend. What many of these people fail to realize is that is the point. By putting even one code into this book, and he put many more than one, Danielewski actually opened up an entire world for his readers to find new things every day. We will never find all of the codes in the book because new ones can always appear. The death of the author indeed, he is entirely unnecessary, and with each new analysis of the book it grows into a new shape, and new additions are made. The book is ever growing, changing, expanding, much like the hallway, the house, the characters.

Not to be content with the simple and easy codes to find, readers have found relevant words all over the book in acrostics. On page 77, "thinking, has another missing year resolved in song?" spells out Thamyris, an ancient mythical bard who challenged the Muses to a singing contest. (He lost of course.)

One speculator noticed that if we turned each letter into a number, (A=1, B=2 and so on), and then add up the numbers that make up Johnny, you get 86. And if you add up the numbers that make up Zampano, you also get 86. 86 is actually a diner slang for "gone," "non-existent," or, "to be gotten rid of." Such as "The tenderloin special is 86ed, table 12 ordered the last one."

Who cares if the author meant to do that, it works for the text, and even if he "didn't mean to," he did it. With the dreamlike feeling of this book, many parts of it could be said to be subconscious, which according to psychoanalysts is able to reach parts of ourselves that we don't see.

1 comment:

  1. I find personally I struggle with this idea in discussing literature and other students' work a lot. I prefer to think that everything is done on purpose. If the author has put it forward, it's intentional. Because if you assume too many things are mistakes or simple randomness, you end up missing layers.
    On the other hand, if you pursue the layers too far, you go insane.
    I find myself taking a middle ground with this book, at least on this preliminary reading. If I pursued every thread in it, I would certainly be clawing my face off and measuring walls (I almost am already). Instead, I'm picking up on the little weird things I pick up on and maybe I'll come back to it later in life and pick out even more.

    Chelsea

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