Slade House Blog 4: Who is telling the story?

As we finish David Mitchell’s Slade House, we turned our attention to an important question–who is telling us this story?  The Rhetoric of Narrative states that there must be a narrator (someone telling the story), an addressee (someone being told the story), and a relationship between the two (a reason for the narrator to address the addressee). By looking at the text through the context of the whole novel, we will be attempting to identify these elements. If you wish to read up on our other thoughts on Slade House, give our previous post a read.

Who’s narrating the story!?

Each chapter has presented us with a different narrator (Nathan, Gordon, Sally, Freya, and Norah) but are there really five different narrators? But the narrator must be telling an addressee these events from a hypothetical time and place, but most of the narrators are gone in every sense of the word. Nathan, Gordon, and Sally all had their souls devoured after being tricked into entering Slade House by the immortal twins, Norah and Jonah Grayer. After his soul is eaten, Nathan cuts off mid-sentence saying “The Nathan in the mirror is gone, and if he’s gone, I’m–” (36). Their fates transcend their story. When they end, so do the words on the page as there is no one left to narrate. Freya escaped, but she was not present when the previous victims spent their last day in Slade House. The only narrator who was there and makes it out of the story with her soul intact is Norah Grayer. Could Norah be the narrator? What is she, psychic? Well, yes. When Jonah, disguised as Fred Pink, tells all to Freya in part of his cat and mouse game in an imagined The Fox and Hounds Pub (or Orison as the twins call it), he explains that the twins possess the power of “telepathy” (151) and that “They could rummage through their clients’ minds and discover things no one knew, not even the people whose minds they were in” (163). She could read the mind of everyone who entered Slade House, like Nathan, Gordon, Sally, and Freya. And could, hypothetically, pass those thoughts along to us, the readers.

But she isn’t talking to us specifically. She’s talking to whoever she wants the reader to be. In Blog 1, we discussed how readers project their values and ideas onto a text when they read. Narrators can do the same thing. If Norah is telling the story, she will project whatever controlling value she wishes to win onto text. So naturally, when she is telling the story, Norah is projecting that her addressee will be persuaded to see things how she has presented them (also known as submitting to the text). She wants her addressee to believe the Orison she has created by constructing this story.

So who is Norah’s perfect addressee? If we believe that Norah is transmitting this story through telepathy, then whoever she is transmitting to must be capable of receiving the message in the first place. Who else is psychic in the book? It turns out, almost everyone. Jonah, as Fred Pink, reveals another key detail to Freya during their talk. The twins can only consume an “Engifted” to feed their lacuna, who is “a psychic, or a potential psychic” (177).  It would then make sense for Norah’s addressee to be an engifted as well.

The addressee after Norah describes the door

But engifted addressees come with a risk. All of their victims were capable of everything the twins do, which explains why their victims were able to begin to see through their Orison sometimes. For example, Nathan sees a woman mouthing words, possibly saying “‘No, no, no’ or ‘Go, go, go’” (21). Sally even finds the exit, breaking the illusion of a Halloween party the twins made when she sees “a small black iron door, exactly like the one is Slade Alley, only this one’s already ajar” (119). Their engifted-ness allows them to look closely and notice the strange, but their failure to reach farther and question what they see leads to their demise. As addressees, we are capable of the same. We notice when something seems off about Jonah asking Nathan about fears Jonah couldn’t have known of, or when Gordon sees Nathan’s portrait, or when Sally sees the iron door in the living room. But then we keep on reading the narrative and go back to just seeing the Orison as what it appears to us as, a story. The narrative is sucking us in like the twins suck victims into their illusions. Us (the addressee) failing to close read parallels the victims failing to examine Slade House closely, only to realize they are trapped. Norah’s chapter reveals how she toys with her addressee like she toys with her engifted victims. When she is luring Marinus into Slade House, while possessing Bombadil’s body, she says “‘It’s small, it’s black, it’s iron'” to Marinus, but thinks “I enjoy spelling out the obvious” (201). How many times has she told us about the small black iron door while she narrated? For each victim she describes the door to us, the addressee. She spells out the trap before us but we enter the door (the narrative) anyway! At this point, she is just showing off her tricks! Norah’s ideal addressee is an engifted, who can receive her telepathic Orison, maybe even notice the odd things within, but ultimately fall for her tricks.

Replace “Time Machine” with “Slade House”

But what is the reason she is telling the engifted addressee her story? Our group could not come to a consensus on this one.  The novel’s repetitive nature, retelling the same story of an engifted lured into an orison with a false story, and each victim being captured and consumed, lends itself to being a cautionary tale. Even the twins themselves ignore what’s right in front of them and are defeated by Marinus in the end. They too were engifted, albeit ones that strayed down a darker path. In this light the narrator is warning others to not make these same mistakes. They want the addressee to see the pattern before they are lead up the stairs. The story then becomes a cautionary tale told to engifted children in their beds. Or maybe its not to any engifted child, but to Norah herself in her new life after she enters the body of a fetus to escape death. She is in the baby’s body, telling herself about all the events that have past. She is recounting it all in present tense because it is coming back to her, and she is processing it all. She was growing old in her previous body and forgetting things. And now she is in a newborn’s body. By remembering all of these events and her goal of revenge at such a “young” age, she is effectively making  her mission her life’s goal. Whoever she is talking to specifically, the message is the same–assume nothing, and question everything because your life could depend on it.

Slade House Blog 3: Hunters and the Hunted

For our third blog on Slade House by David Mitchel we took a look at intertextual codes, like the semic, proairetic, symbolic, and cultural codes. Through looking for these codes in the text, we are working to discover any connotative meanings and see if what we find challenges the controlling values.

As described on our course’s website, the semic code “Defines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers (“semes”: words and phrases) around a proper name.” That is to say that characters, objects, and places are often described by certain words or associated with certain images throughout the text. These words and images carry a connotative meanings or connections to other texts and cultural ideas that help define them for the reader.

For example, the twins call all of their victims “engifted.” This carries several implications from the idea of being academically gifted to perhaps being supernaturally gifted. Another signfier that surrounds these engifted characters are foxes. Every victim begins there journey outside or in a pub called The Fox and Hounds. A fox hairpin is also passed from victim to victim throughout the chapters. At one point Nathan, the first victim, plays a game with Jonah called fox and hounds. In the game, two people start a race on opposite sides of the house and run until someone catches the other. As Jonah explains, “The catcher is the hound and one who’s caught is the fox” (20). While their game gets interrupted, Nathan fails to escape Slade House and gets his soul devoured. He most certainly ends up being the captured fox and the twins are the hounds hunting him. The game also sets up a symbolic code, which consists of opposites in the text, of chaser and the chase, or killer and victim, or the powerful and the powerless. The twins have all the power in their Orison. They literally control everything their victim perceives, while their victims have no control.

Being the fox defines Nathan and the other engifted as prey, but foxes carry a cultural connotation of cleverness and danger. Later, foxes reappear in a much different context. While the fourth victim, Freya, is having her soul devour, the ghost of her sister appears with the fox hair pin and “plunges a six-inch needle into one side of [jonah’s] windpipe” (193). That is the more cunning fox we are used to seeing. So it seems the semic code of foxes defines the engifted as both prey and predator.

The ending of Freya’s chapter, with her escape from the twins, also demonstrates the Proairetic code. The proairetic code “determines the causal (cause and effect), narrative sequence and syntagmatic progression…. which allows the reader to predict subsequent events that follow from their causes.” We can see the proairetic code in the chapters leading up to Freya’s story by the repetition in each victim’s journey. Each victim is lured through the Black iron door, lured into Slade House itself, tricked into eating or drinking the Banjax, and tricked into entering the Lacuna under their own free will. After the engifted is lured through the door, they find themselves paralyzed and kneeling in front of a candle, facing both Grayer Twins and their own reflection in the mirror. Their soul is then pulled out by some type of “jellyfish like” blob with tendrils and devoured by the twins.  So when chapter 4 comes around, the reader is predicting in their mind what will happen. They already assume Freya will follow the steps laid out by those before. And knowing that dreadful outcome builds the tension of the story.  Yet, in chapter 4 when Freya’s soul is about to be consumed, Sally’s after image appears and attacks Jonah. As a result, the Grayer twins are not able to feed on the soul, and the Orison is closed for another 9 years. This deviation before the final chapter alters the proairetic code, but still has some semblance of it. Despite the reversal, it keeps building suspense because now the reader cannot guess where the story will go next.

All of these codes point to a cultural code developing throughout the text. The cultural code “speak the familiar ‘truths’ of the existing cultural order, repeat what has ‘always been already read, seen, done, experienced'” (Silverman 242). The hunter becoming the hunted is a familiar story we all have experienced. The contradicting nature of stories where the side with no hope, no power, but refuses to die, win against those with all the power. However, Freya’s escape is not the end of the story. So we will have to see whether the powerful twins who forsake their humanity win out, or their victims who cling to their humanity conquer their killers from beyond the grave.

Slade House Blog 2: References, References, and more References.

As we continue our second reading of Slade House by David Mitchell, we decided to try to spot our own dead cats, as mentioned in Blog 1. The protagonist of the first chapter, Nathan, often spots the out of the ordinary, like a dead cat in an alleyway. So as readers, we challenged ourselves to go back and pick out sections of the text we found odd. By reading these sections closely, maybe we discovered perspectives he had not seen before.

During her second time reading Slade House, Brittany noticed images that were repeated numerous time. Each chapter someone is lured into Slade House. For example, Nathan’s mother goes because she hopes it would help her music career and Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds is lured by Norah disguised as an attractive woman in need of help. Brittany also noticed that each time, the victims passed through “a small black iron door, set into the brick wall” (9) that leads into a beautiful garden. Also while in Slade House, every victim eats a special substance, which the Grayer twins call banjax. And finally, each victim, with the exception of the last, gets their soul devoured. When examining the basic structure of each chapter and the motifs within, Brittany realized that you could draw multiple parallels to the biblical Garden of Eden story. Both stories feature humans tempted with something they desire by a sinister trickster(s) figure (It wouldn’t be far stretch to call the Grayer Twins snakes) while in a grand garden. They partake in a food offered by the trickster(s), whether it be an apple of a cup of coffee, and lose their immortal soul. Adam and Eve lost their place in Heaven and the victims of Slade House have their souls devoured by the Grayer twins. Alex also picked up on a biblical reference. Jonah Grayer shares his name with the prophet who was eaten by a whale. While Jonah is the one doing the eating, instead of being eaten, Alex found out through some research that due to the biblical story, sailors traditionally use the name “Jonah” to personify someone who brings bad luck. The Jonah from Slade House brings bad luck to Nathan and the other victims. After closely reading the characters interactions with the garden and the Grayer twins, Brittany revised her controlling ideas of Slade House. Viewed through this lens, the book is about giving into temptations and the effect it has on your soul, or sense of self. As discussed in Blog 1, Nathan does die because he distrusts himself.

Speaking of Nathan, Alex decided to dig into the seemingly hapless narrator of the first chapter. One reference that really stuck with him was about Asterix, a popular French comic. Nathan mentions, “For me, Valium’s like Asterix’s magic potion, but it makes Mum dopey” (8). In the Asterix stories, Asterix’s village hasn’t been conquered by Julius Caesar thanks to a secret magic potion created by the village’s wise old druid (known as Getafix in English), which gives whoever drinks it temporary superhuman strength, agility, and senses (almost like a super powerful adrenaline shot). Nathan mentions the comic series  because it was very popular in Europe in the ’70s and  ’80s, and  Valium is his magic potion, giving him a sense of high in which he can accomplish his best. The first time Alex, and the rest of us, read the chapter we doubted Nathan’s experiences because he was on Valium. Like Nathan, we assumed that he was hallucinating rather than actually experiencing the garden dissolving or Jonah turning into a Mastiff. But if we look at it with the perspective that Nathan is like Asterix, than Nathan’s perception of events (or at least perception of the Grayer’s Orison) was more accurate than a normal person’s. That would explain why Nathan saw so many more warning signs than the second victim Gordon Edmonds. Prephaps if we had trusted in our narrator more the first time, we would have seen the Grayer twin’s plan earlier.

In an attempt to close read, Nicole decided to also look at what Nathan notices. Nathan notices that “Seven Magpies fly by. Seven’s good” (3). The Magpie is a clever bird that constructs the best nests and is one of the only mammals that can recognize themselves in a mirror (Wikipedia.com). Norah and Jonah can be likened to the magpie in their detailed construction of their illusions for their victims as well as the use of the mirrors, which the victims see themselves in. As the English Fairy tale about magpies explains, the magpie tries to teach the other birds how to build nests but none stay till the end, and at which point the magpie is fed up and refuses to teach anymore (surlalunefairytales.com). To Nicole this shows a sense of pride in the creation of the nest, and the illusion, which may lead to too much pride. Which is a downfall for Norah and Jonah later on. Furthermore, Nathan sees the seven magpies and decides that it is a good sign, which ultimately isn’t so for him. In most cultures the number seven is a lucky, pleasing mathematical iteration. There are seven days of the week, seven continents, seven seas, seven wonders of the world, and don’t forget the winning lucky sevens in every casino. But it isn’t so in all cultures. In Chinese culture the number signifies not just bad luck, but death (psychiclibrary.com). Which in Nathan’s case ends up making the most sense.

Something everyone noticed was the repeated mentions of The Fox and Hounds tavern that every victim sees when they try to find Slade House. Brittany researched the name and found a game by the name where the objective is for the fox piece to cross to the other side of a chest board without being stopped by the hound pieces, which parallels the Slade House victims trying to escape the Grayer Twins. Nicole noticed that Nathan says, “She’s wearing her dark blue concert outfit and her hair up with the silver fox-head hairpin”(4) which she had originally forgotten that the hairpin came from his mother. The fox hairpin is one of the things that lead to the ultimate demise of the Grayer twins. It is a symbol of cunning, cleverness, and adaptability (whats-your-sign.com). With this aiding in the the downfall of the Norah and Jonah, the symbol is well used. The mention of, “[A] pub called The Fox and Hounds” (3) implies that the fox is cornered (like in the game) and will not survive. But the use of the fox hairpin proves that the foxes strategy and cleverness wins out over brutality.

All of these insights produced by close reading gave us some new perspectives to consider. When we stopped and noticed the odd, we could begin to peal back the layers of the text. Controlling ideas and even plot points of the novel can shift and transform based on what perspective you choose to view the story from. New information, like biblical parallels, name meanings, comic titles, folklore, and games shifted how we looked at the text. Perhaps going forward, we will continue to see these connections and see how they alter our perception of of the text.

Slade House Blog 1: A Boy, A House, and a Dead Cat

Our reading group’s first book is the novel Slade House by David Mitchell. The first chapter of Slade House is focused on a young boy named Nathan and his mother heading to meet a Lady Grayer at her house, Slade House, which is off of Slade Alley. After a bit of trouble finding the location, they finally arrive through the black iron door into Slade House’s garden where they are introduced to Lady Grayer and her son Jonah. Lady Grayer, who goes by Norah, takes Nathan’s mother inside to meet with a well-known musician. Nathan stays in the house’s garden to play with Jonah.

All the members of our reading group had read Slade House over the summer and when re-reading this first chapter we were reading while keeping our potential projections of text in mind.  While discussing this text, we all realized that we in some way had projected our own ideas onto the text. One possible source was preconceived notions of what genre Slade House belongs to. Hearing a book is “horror” or “suspense” raises expectations of what that book will be like and we look for those characteristics when we read. Another source of projections came from our own previous readings. It was difficult to read mimetically and to submit to the text when we knew what was coming.

We were also trying to discern the controlling idea and counter idea, terms for opposing themes defined by Robert McKee in “Structure and Meaning.” Certain things stuck out to as the narrator, Nathan, tells the story. Nathan’s mind tends to wander, which is reflected in his stream of consciousness narration. His mother is scolding him, but he focuses on her lipstick color or the story of how she got her hairpin. Nathan’s mother instructs him to improve his skills in “Blend In more” (5) and “Acting Normal” (6). Nathan is in a constant struggle between how he wishes to act and how those around him expect him to act, as exemplified by his fascination with a dead cat in Slade Alley. When Nathan points out the dead cat and tries to express how much it upset him, he is shut down by his mother. She wants him to think as she does and forget about it, and he does for a moment. In this small exchange, the ways of others (the way of ignoring dead cats) prevails and Nathan submits to that way of thinking.

Events escalate the longer Nathan stays in Slade House.  While playing with Jonah, Nathan is suddenly consumed with a vision of the garden fading into nothing and a mastiff (his biggest fear) chasing him into Slade House.  He tries to tell Norah, but she assumes he means they were pretending. Things get stranger as he looks for his mother and discovers a peculiar painting of himself. He is confused is quick to blame his mother for this terrible “joke.” Everything that happens are big red flags that you think would make anyone get the heck out of that house, but Nathan doesn’t. A perfect example is while he is playing with Jonah, Nathan sees a woman with a beehive hairdo mouthing words. He thinks she might be saying “‘No, no, no’ or ‘Go, go, go’” (21). Nathan tries to focus on the woman and figure it out, but he snaps back to playing the game when Jonah calls out “‘Ready, Nathan?’” (21). Again, Nathan wants to focus on the peculiar, but instead of a dead cat, it’s a woman with a beehive hairdo. He then submits to another person calling his attention back to the socially acceptable behavior, but instead of his mother telling him to ignore the dead cat, it’s Jonah calling his attention to the game. Nathan repeatedly fails to stick with his gut instincts and instead tries to think and behave like he is expected to.

The result is that he becomes trapped in Slade House’s attic by Norah and Jonah, who promptly eat his soul. When you forsake your own autonomy by letting others dictate how you should act and think, you will be consumed. Nathan’s tragic end is proof of that controlling value winning out in the end. Nathan was literally consumed, but when we submit to them and their ideas aren’t we also consumed by the masses? Is there anything left of us if we allow others to decide our thoughts? While for Nathan, there was nothing left, the first chapter does leave us with some hope. For every moment when the “they” won in Nathan’s mind, there was also a moment where the counter idea, Nathan’s trust in himself, put up a fight. He stopped to watch the woman with the beehive hair and he tried to tell Norah of the mastiff and when he found a portrait of the beehive woman along with his own, he heard her call out “Run now, as fast as you can,  the way you came in” (26). While submission won, resistance existed. Now whether someone will ever trust in themselves enough to conquer Slade House or not will become evident as we progress through the novel, but for the rest of us, we can only stop and notice a dead cat when we see one, despite what everyone else says.