The power of love in Slaughterhouse-Five and House of Leaves

If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give

love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will

be empty, our loss greater.

-Unknown

Love is a powerful emotion, perhaps the most powerful of them all. It can make or break men, driving them to the brink of insanity or pushing them to the top of their game. It’s both a motivator and a deterrent; both a blessing and a curse. When bestowed upon a once humble, indifferent individual his or her life is changed, for better or for worse, forever.

Perhaps even more moving than love itself is the power love has to change people, and the central role this “changing power” plays in novels. Particularly the role this power plays in both Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. In both books the main characters are effected by love greatly, one driven to insanity and the other pushed to fame.

Navidson and Pilgrim are both heavily effected by love. Navidson and Karen are deeply in love with each other, but they aren’t loyal to each other. Navidson, a reporter always puts his adventuring spirit before his dearly beloved, and Karen responds by having multiple affairs. Pilgrim, on the other hand, never loved Valencia, his wife, but she was deeply and immensely in love with him. The situations that love puts both Navidson and Pilgrim in, making them feel empty at times and full at others, is a very large part of both character’s personalities.

In House of Leaves, Navidson’s feeling of emptiness left by his wife’s betrayal if symbolized as a house that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside; an obvious metaphor for a man distraught; his inner troubles are much larger than anything that could fit inside of a body so tiny in size when compared to his woes and inner void. The walls of the house shift more and more violently as Karen gets equally more and more upset with Navidson’s obsession with the house. Eventually, after the house, and Navidson’s obsession with it, cause them to separate the house swallows Navidson. Karen sensing that her true love is in danger rushes into the hallway that she fears and realizes how much she loves Navidson. The thought of the true love defeats the house, or fills the void, and she finds him almost instantly and when she does, the walls of the immense labyrinth dissolve. Navidson’s movie of the whole ordeal becomes a famous work of art, and its all because of the love that he and Karen share with each other. Love is crazy like that, it made the horrible situation that almost killed him, then it saved him from it and made him famous.

Billy Pilgrim has a similar story to tell. He marries Valencia, the daughter of a rich and powerful man in the line of work Billy wishes to enter: optometry. Billy never loves Valencia, even though she’s deeply and madly in love with him. When Billy’s plan crashes and he’s the only survivor she rushes to the hospital to see him and dies on the way, to carbon monoxide poisoning. Billy is never the same after this. He can no longer distinguish fact from fiction, present from memory. All he can do now is hope he can protect others from his sad fate, and he does so by prescribing corrective lenses for the soul: allowing people to peer into themselves and fill any emptiness, emptiness that
Pilgrim has to live with for the rest of his life.

These two characters have a lot of parallel aspects but are also distinctively different. While the both have pain caused by love, one’s pain comes from loving and the other’s comes from being loved without returning the love. Both men are very empty when things aren’t going their way, and Billy stays empty for the remainder of his life realizing that he should have loved his wife, a realization that came a little too late. The pain that is caused is a very central theme in both of the books, Billy’s “time jumps” and Navidson’s “house that’s bigger on the inside and on the outside” are both symbols of what love can do to men.

For better or for worse couldn’t be more accurate. It’s a vital line when getting married, and it’s the most uncertain. Will it be for better or for worse? It’s quite possible it could go either way, because love is the all powerful miracle and the malevolent execration.