"A" (not necessarily "the") conclusion..

[eoin3]

I finnished the book for the first time yesterday after picking it up last December and putting it down for more than 6 months and picking it back up again. I believe I've come to "a" concusion.

We are all searching for some greater meaning and as there is so much to discover in the HoL it's no wonder that we have all become caught up in it's mysteries. Theology, mythology, Latin, Greek, German, Olde English, complex codes, links, deadends, mysteries wraped in a riddle bathed in an enigma devised of pure genius...or madness.

What does it all mean? What is the answer to our obsession? I believe there is none. No greater truth to be found, no relief to be found in the pages, or leaves (if you will) of our House. It's merely an exorcise in Obsession. A glorious one at that. Give them some juicy links, hide clues in code, make the numbers add up to something almost meaningful, give them just enough rope to hang themselves and watch them dangle.

Whats the one thing that everyone in the book had in common? Obsession...at one level or another and for all their expeditions and searching and researching and soul searching did anyone ever find an answer? No. All they found were more questions and more than a few found death.

I believe that the only true answer is that there are just going to be mysteries in life and sometimes you just have to relize that there is no answer and be content with that. Now I'm not saying that I'm giving up on trying to get a greater understanding for all the content that HoL has to offer because I'm not ready to let this wonderful feeling go just yet. There are stil hallways to discover in that old house, great halls and winding staircases that lead to...(God or maybe only MZD knows where) It's opened my world to so many new ideas and schools of thought. I want to read more mythology...I want to learn a little Latin...I want to try to tackle the Bible one day. I want more knowledge and that is what I will take from this book. As obsession fades the thirst for knowing ony grows.

That's my theory anyway...I may be wrong; I've been wrong before...hell...when I die I may find out there is a God and I may have "some splainin' to do". But if this idea does anything to help ease the obsession at least a little, good, that's all it was meant to do...

[jeepin818]

OMG...you mean to tell me that all this hell I have put myself thru may have been in vain!
No Joe say it ain't so!

[girl2]

i think that you're touching on what i'm thinking of as the ultimate message of the book. rather than obsession, i see it as a lack of communication. we all feel like there should be a code, we all feel like pelafina and zampano had to have known each other, if not spoken to each other regularly at one time. we all feel like johnny's past is hazy, and his communications with his mother are sketchy at best, but we can never find a solid source of information to trust. we keep looking and looking and looking for that line of deep and meaningful conversation that is never there.

i think that this is meant to leave us hollow, wondering what the hell is going on and feeling like that speech we just need to hear is right around the bend, making us feel like karen and navy did in the house, like johnny did with his past, like chad and daisy did with their parents, and like zampano did with (possibly?) pelafina. they're all grasping in the air for that thread of talk that will sew them together as people, but they NEVER find it. kinda like we all dig and dig and dig, and never find the answers we're looking for. we're suffering from the same lack of communication as the characters in the book.

umm, i probably just restated everything you did, eoin, but thought i'd just share my thoughts! =]

[no-genius]

Its kind of like one of those pictures that either look like a vase or two faces - you can flip between 'its just a book' and 'but there has to be something!'. And then you die. Only, really, its not just one book, but at least 3 books, and a film. That by my reckoning must be well over 2-3 hours long - possibly over 5 hours, even.

I guess the bit about riddles kind of suggests that actually, in the real world, most problems don't have answers. But then its not really about finding what its 'really' about, just trying to get an explanation that works for you. Or at least, if you're never going to find the 'real' explanation, a convincing one is more satisfying than none.

[fearful_syzygy]

That's a good point. Has anyone ever tried to work out approximately how long TNR would be?

HB, Ell: take it away.

[heartbreak]

Now that is an intriguing idea fearful. I know some parts a page is essentially a frame, but other parts are not structured that way. I think I'll take notes on that next time I read through.

[Ellimist]

24 or 25 fps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-8

Someone check. (based on RPM and rotations per frame)

[no-genius]

Well, I'm assuming the five-and-a-half minute hallway is five-and-a-half minutes, and that's just over half a page, but the problem is that the amount of words/lines/paragraphs/pages written about a sequence aren't necessarily going to correspond to how long it is.

Also, I reckon 'what some people have thought' would be about 20 minutes to half an hour, just from it being a DVD extra.

[mskandikaine]

Hey eoin3.

I've been working on a research essay for my psychology class, and i chose this book for my topic.

I hope you don't mind if i share your ideas about the conclusion in my essay, since i need to opinions of other people.

I would mention you, so you would have the credit for it.

[heartbreak]

Hello ms. Welcome to the site. Just to give you a heads up so you don't feel bad when eoin3 doesn't reply, but they haven't been active in quite sometime.

[Inertiatic]

Right. We're all searching through hallways, trying to find a dead end or another hallway- and we don't know which. Whichever will give us answers. One person who read the book may base their entire philosophy of it on The Five Minute Hallway, others, what little they know of The Last Interview, or, perhaps, Johnny's perspective. Each way will bring us down winding and criss-crossing hallways that may or may not bring us to a door without a doorknob we must break down to find the truth inside and bring it back up out of the depths to the light. But, will it, too, die?

And does this only apply to the book?

I very much doubt it, the book's scope is much greater than that.

I wonder which hallway MZD is suggesting...?

[heartbreak]

*chuckles*

Edit: No offense meant to you. Welcome to the site.

[Inertiatic]

Got too Truant-like there for a second. Got too caught up in it all, I guess. :)

Thanks for the welcome.

[heartbreak]

It was mostly your last question I was chuckling about. People give me a hard time for wondering what MZD intended.

You might check over in some of the music threads in the Out of the Way section. There are a couple Mars Volta fans.

[Inertiatic]

I just looked that up.

What a coincidence- I made up the name and it turns out to be a song!

Odd.

[heartbreak]

Very odd.

[fearful_syzygy]

Obviously an instance of extra-sensory perception.

[Ellimist]

Obviously.

[Rryssa]

Wrong ESP, I think.

[fearful_syzygy]

Ah yes, how silly of me. Please allow me to propel my penance ectopically.

[Slow Dog Noodle]

Bless you.

[Rryssa]

... I could swear it didn't sound that dirty in the Storybook.