by Campbell Key
This semester, it took me a little bit longer to go to bed. And no, it’s not because I was staying up binge watching game of thrones, it was because I couldn’t sleep. Every time I turned out the lights I thought something was out to get me. Now, this wasn’t because I was watching horror movies (which I have never, and will never do), it was because I was doing my english homework.
This is the first year Mrs. Konigsmark has taught “The Haunting of Hill House,” by Shirley Jackson. It’s about four strangers who come to live in this haunted house in the hills of a small town to complete an experiment, lead by a Dr. Montague, attempting to prove the existence of the supernatural. During this experiment, many strange and unexplainable things occur: there is hammering on the doors in the middle of the night, children laugh when there aren’t any children around; there is writing on the walls; and all of the doors shut whenever characters try to open them. Finally, at the end of the book, the house takes one of these four people, driving them to insanity.
Now, a book can’t really have any jump scares, so it has to actually be well written for it to be scary which this book definitely is. I’m not sure how many people in my class were actually scared by this book as much as I was, but I think everyone that read it at least got a chill once or twice.
Mrs. Konigsmark said that her goal wasn’t to add a scary book to the ninth grade curriculum, she really just wanted to diversify the authors the freshmen read because all of the other books the freshmen read are written by white males.
She also wanted to make sure that she didn’t skip out of having us (the freshmen) read classics. In her opinion, this book is a classic just because of how well written it is. As someone who has read this book, I will vouch for that.
In “The Haunting of Hill House,” everything written has a meaning behind it. Nothing is put in randomly. If you dissect this book, you can find so many interesting meanings behind the obvious plot line. This also makes class discussions a lot more interesting. It’s more than just talking about new characters introduced and finding metaphors (which I personally hate having to do.)
Before I interviewed Mrs. Konigsmark, I was wondering if she chose this book because she wanted us to read something scary, as she was having us write our own scary story. However, after I interviewed her, I realized this wasn’t her goal, and this is just what she based her unit around.
I must say I’m really happy about this. While I don’t like reading scary stories, I have learned that I love to write them. Planning out the suspense and figuring out ways you can make your story scary is really interesting. It’s also nice to be able to turn in something for school that you are proud of and somewhat enjoyed doing.
In the end, I agree with Mrs. Konigsmark that we need some new books for freshmen to read. She’s right about all of the books the ninth graders read having the same perspective, and I really did love reading “The Haunting of Hill House.”
Hailey Savage listened to the audio book, “which definitely made it scarier,” but she doesn’t think that the book is scary itself.
If you have any extra time, I suggest reading it. Or you could always watch the Netflix series. It has nothing to do with the book besides having some of the same names and it is in a haunted house, but hey, it’s better than nothing.
