Welcome to the end of the novel. Whew, what a trip. Now that we've arrived, we have to ask ourselves the question all readers must ponder upon turning to that final, blank page: why did the story end here? What is so special that this spot marks our destination?
In the case of The Haunting of Hill House, the end can be summarized as follows: we are told the fates of the survivors and then glimpse the return of the threat or evil force. Sound familiar? If it does, it's because this final stop is the same one used in countless horror books and films. Here are just a few of the horror tales that end with this formula:
- Friday the 13th. We learn what happens to Alice right before Jason Voorhees leaps out of the lake to finish the film's deadly game of tag.
- Salem's Lot. Ben and Mark escape the clutches of the vampires but return to the undead town years later to continue their holy war.
- Final Destination. The three survivors vacation in Paris only to learn that Death still hunts them.
Odd, isn't it? Hill House broke so many rules and did away with so much convention. Why at the end does it suddenly play toward the old cliché? Does it? Let's find out.
So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye
The first half of the last paragraph gives us the fates of the survivors. Everyone but the recently deceased Eleanor leaves Hill House and goes his or her own way. Theodora's roommate welcomes her back with open arms, Luke lives it up abroad in Paris (always Paris), and Dr. Montague abandons his research after his article is not so kindly rejected by the scholarly world.
They all go back to their lives, and with the exception of that crushing intellectual blow to Dr. Montague, we get no information suggesting they are worse off then when they came to Hill House. They're safe and sound. This part of the formula, it seems, remains true to form.
Now we come the second part of the classic horror story ending: the return of the threat or the evil force. Like Jason leaping from the lake, this part is meant to offer the audience one last scare at the story's end, something to leave them shivering as they leave the theater or rest their books on their nightstands.
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked
The second half of the last paragraph upholds this tradition but also tweaks it. Here's a quick refresher:
Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there walked alone. (9.116)
What we have here is a nearly word-for-word reprise of the novel's opening. So, on the one hand, we have the return of the threat, a classic horror cliché. The evil of Hill House that opened the novel returns—in a very literal sense—at the novel's end. On the other hand, the ending reworks the return of the evil to serve a very different purpose. It's far more than an elaborate "Boo!"
The similarity of the opening and ending passages gives the novel a sense of circularity. The evil of Hill House doesn't just return; it's an evil that can't be defeated or satisfied even for a moment. It never ends.
The never-ending quality of Hill House's evil doesn't just pop up at the novel's conclusion, either. It's been foreshadowed throughout the story. Here are a couple of the hints we get (there are more):
- The fate and death of the young woman who inherited Hill House after the old Cairn sister is oddly similar to Eleanor's fate and death (3.136).
- The singsong game played by Eleanor as she runs up and down the halls of Hill House always ends with the phrase, "As we have done before…" (8.169).
- The image of the library's circular stairway—and Eleanor's climbing of it—hints at the story's circular nature (9.16).
How you read the novel will depend on what you think this never-ending evil truly is. Is it the malevolent force of Hill House itself? Is it the madness-inducing qualities of its architecture? Is it the terrors faced by women living through the stifling home life of the 1950s? Your answers to these questions will change the nature of whatever you think it is walking alone in those final words.