English
Chapter 1-3:
We have always lived in the castle – by Shirley Jackson
"On Sunday mornings I examined my safeguards, the box of silver dollars I had buried by the creek, and the doll buried in the long field, and the book nailed to the tree in the pine woods; so long as they were where I had put them nothing could get in to harm us. I had always buried things, even when I was small; I remember that once I quartered the long field and buried something in each quarter to make the grass grow higher as I grew taller, so I would always be able to hide there. I once buried six blue marbles in the creek bed to make the river beyond run dry. "Here is treasure for you to bury," Constance used to say to me when I was small, giving me a penny, or a bright ribbon; I had buried all my baby teeth as they came out one by one and perhaps someday they would grow as dragons. All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us."
I chose this passage of the book because it gave me a better idea of the main character. Merricat has a set routine throughout the week. On Sunday mornings, she makes sure her family is safe by performing all kinds of strange rituals. Here we find out that she practices witchcraft. In the passage, you can read how Merricat buries all kinds of things and she even nails books to a tree. For Merricat, it is all about safety and protecting the house and family. From this, you can conclude that she cares a lot about her family. This event sets a mysterious tone for the story. As a reader, you are naturally left pondering who poisoned the family. Having found out that Merricat practices witchcraft, you might start thinking that she would be capable of killing her family for some kind of ritual. Poisoned food is a dominant theme in the novel. This is the cause of the origin of the story
I think Merricat is a very interesting character because she comes across as very mysterious. In the story, you notice that she cares immensely about her sister Constance. She ensures hers and uncle Julians safety by performing rituals and takes the job very seriously. The thing that confuses me most is that she wears her deceased family's clothes. I think this is a very weird thing to do and this shows how mentally unstable Merricat is. Something I found very interesting about her is that she lives in her own world. You can tell this by all the weird things she says and does, a good example is when she said she hopes that someday her baby teeth will "come out as dragons." What I would like to know about Merricat is if she knows anything more about her family's murder, because I think she has something to do with this whole event.
I have
three possibilities in my mind of how the story will continue. The first is
that Merricat has something to do with her family's murder to protect her
sister because she loves her so much. The second possibility is that someone from
the village who thought the family was too weird and scary put the poison in the sugar. The last possibility is that the parents discovered something in the
family that was so terrible that they wanted to stop their bloodline. That's
why they tried to poison everyone. This I can certainly imagine, given this family's history of strange events. The family has a very strange and scary reputation.
Chapter 4-7: We have always lived in the castle – by Shirley Jackson
"I knew I would dislike talking to Charles, but it was almost too late to ask him politely and I thought I should ask him once. Even the garden had become a strange landscape with Charles' figure in it; I could see him standing under the apple trees and the trees were crooked and shortened beside him. I came out the kitchen door and walked slowly toward him. I was trying to think charitably of him, since I would never be able to speak kindly until I did, but whenever I thought of his big white face grinning at me across the table or watching me whenever I moved I wanted to beat at him until he went away, I wanted to stamp on him after he was dead, and see him lying dead on the grass. So I made my mind charitable toward Charles and came up to him slowly.
"Cousin Charles?" I said, and he turned to look at me. I thought of seeing him dead. "Cousin Charles?" "Well?" "I have decided to ask you please to go away." "All right," he said. "You asked me." "Please will you go away? "No," he said. I could not think of anything further to say. I saw that he was wearing our father's gold watch chain, even with the crooked link, and I knew without seeing that our father's watch was in his pocket. I thought that tomorrow he would be wearing our father's signet ring, and I wondered if he would make Constance put on our mother's pearls. "You stay away from Jonas," I said. "As a matter of fact," he said, "come about a month from now, I wonder who _will_ still be here? You," he said, "or me?"
I think this passage says a lot about the current situation of the story. Charles has appeared in the story and you notice from all aspects that Merricat does not want him in her family home. She tells us how much hatred she carries for him. She absolutely wants him out of the house and above all away from her sister because she has a bad premonition about him. In my opinion this passage is structured in a certain way and I will explain them separately. It starts with Merricat wanting to go and ask Charles to leave because the house has taken on a strange atmosphere after his arrival. The only problem is that she cannot stand him and she even says in the passage that she wants him dead and stomp on his dead body. This shows she is capable of bad things and I think that this is foreshadowing. She puts herself over this feeling and approaches him in the garden. She asks him to leave and he actually responds to this very coldly, as if he has all the control around there. The problem now is that she sees Charles is wearing her dead father's jewelry. I still find the last sentence of the passage the most gripping, because it comes across as very intimidating. Here you can really see that Charles is up to something and that he will follow through no matter what he has to do to get there. I think you can clearly link this passage with cruelty. I concluded this by the sentence "I wanted to beat at him until he went away, I wanted to stamp on him after he was dead, and see him lying dead on the grass." that Merricat says before she approaches Charles. This makes you notice the intense hatred she feels for her cousin Charles.
In this story, there are certain elements that are clearly gothic and then others that are not at all. For example, the house they live in is very clean and is not like a typical Gothic building that is all worn out. But then, on the other hand, the atmosphere is completely gothic, because it is very mysterious, dark and sometimes even cruel. So one could take the view that this is not a gothic story because it does not have the typical features like the certain environments in such a story. But still, you can consider it a gothic story because of the writing style that creates a gothic atmosphere. This is then mainly because of the narrator (Merricat) who you can't really count on to tell the story correctly. Which in its turn ensures that there is an ignorance for the reader and creates a certain tension.
Chapter 8-10: We have always lived in the castle – by Shirley Jackson
"She began to shiver as though she were angry, and I took her by the hand and brought her through the open front door and just as we turned back for another look the lights came into the driveway with the disgusting noise of sirens and we were held in the doorway in the light. Constance put her face against me to hide, and then there was Jim Donell, the first one to leap from the fire engine and run up the steps. "Out of the way," he said, and pushed past us and into our house. I took Constance along the porch to the corner where the vines grew thick, and she moved into the corner and pressed against the vines. I held her hand tight, and together we watched the great feet of the men stepping across our doorsill, dragging their hoses, bringing filth and confusion and danger into our house. More lights moved into the driveway and up to the steps, and the front of the house was white and pale and uncomfortable at being so clearly visible; it had never been lighted before.
The noise was too much for me to hear all together, but somewhere in the noise was Charles' voice, still _going_ on and on. "Get the safe in the study," he said a thousand times. Smoke squeezed out the front door, coming between the big men pushing in. "Constance," I whispered, "Constance, don't watch them." "Can they see me?" she whispered back. "Is anyone looking?" "They're all watching the fire. Be very quiet." I looked carefully out between the vines. There was a long row of cars, and the village fire engine, all parked as close to the house as they could get, and everyone in the village was there, looking up and watching. I saw faces laughing, and faces that looked frightened, and then someone called out, very near to us, "What about the women, and the old man? Anyone see them?" "They had plenty of warning," Charles shouted from somewhere, "they're all right." Uncle Julian could manage his chair well enough to get out the back door, I thought, but it did not seem that the fire was going near the kitchen or Uncle Julian's room; I could see the hoses and hear the men shouting, and they were all on the stairs and in the front bedrooms upstairs. I could not get through the front door, and even if I could leave Constance there was no way to go around to the back door without going down the steps in the light with all of them watching. "Was Uncle Julian frightened?" I whispered to Constance. "I think he was annoyed," she said.
A few minutes later she said, "It will take a great deal of scrubbing to get that hall clean again," and sighed. I was pleased that she thought of the house and forgot the people outside. "Jonas?" I said to her, "where is he?" I could see her smile a little in the darkness of the vines. "He was annoyed, too," she said. "He went out the back door when I took Uncle Julian in to get his papers. We were all right. Uncle Julian might very well forget that there was a fire at all if he became interested in his papers, and Jonas was almost certainly watching from the shadow of the trees. When they had finished putting out Charles' fire I would take Constance back inside and we could start to clean our house again."
I found this passage very interesting because it actually gives you an overview of everyone's priorities. Merricat's priority is clearly Constance. She is visibly worried about her and wants to reassure her. In this passage, you can see the great love the sisters have for each other on a deper level. Merricat also asks after her cat Jonas to check if he got out of the burning house safely. Constance's priority is the house. She refers several times to how long it will take to clean the house again and she hopes the fire will be extinguished as soon as possible so she can start cleaning it. Uncle Julian's priority is all his paperwork. He wants to save it from the fire. The two sisters assume he will get out through the back by himself. But this has not been the case as he died in the fire. Charles' priorities are also very clear. He tells Constance to leave the safe and put the money in a bag to take it outside. You hear Charles repeat this several times in the passage "Get the safe in the study!". This shows how obsessed he is with the money and what his real intentions are.
I think all family members in the Blackwood family are a bit disturbed, but I still think Merricat clearly stands out. There are several factors that lead me to this conclusion. First, Merricat killed her family by putting poison in the sugar. I think this is the most obvious example. But there were other elements that troubled me, such as Merricat's magic. She strongly believes in magic and practices it regularly. One example is her burying objects in the garden. These are supposed to protect the house and her sister and uncle. You notice throughout the story that she lives in her own world and this is rather disturbing. She is obsessed with death and poison and all these dark things. Merricat also tried to save her sister from the temptation of their cousin Charles. She did this by starting a fire that led to the whole house burning down. After this event, she was even relieved because this way all traces of Charles disappeared. According to her, she cleansed the house.