HOUSE TAKEN OVER – Mario Cortázar

The story “House taken over” is presented in first person, the main character knows all the events
perfectly, along with to her sister Irene. Both siblings have grown together and shared many
experiences, helping each other if there is any problem.

The brothers have lived part of their lives in an old House. They love their place because over time
they had beautiful memories with their parents since childhood. Although both are adults, none
has made a separate life, with the pretext of keeping the House, rather than become a series of
walls in ruins. The protagonist and narrator of “House taken over” is a fairly intelligent and
educated man in the French literature.

Thanks to the influence of the narrator for this type of literature, he loved European culture. On
the other hand, is Irene, who in the story is described as a gentle woman with a peaceful
character. One of the chores that she does most is knitting; even an entire day without
complaining.

Brothers at no time in the story complain about the situation of the old house. Both act as if the
outside world there was not unfortunate events. They are simply two living in the house, and
sometimes that house seemed to be huge for only two people.

Not the narrator nor Irene worked on anything in their entire lives. They live thanks to a fortune
that their parents left them before dying. The relationship between the narrator and Irene, saying
that, instead of brothers, seemed more an ordinary couple.

Both have the same character of carelessness, as if they knew that everything in the world is
controlled and nothing or no one is going to affect them. None of them is leaving their comfort
zone to expose a different point of view, one on the other.

Julio Cortázar makes a series of brief descriptions of all the elements contained in the story. His
main emphasis is to make known the murmurs that brothers hear continually in their home. At the
beginning, these whispers are due to lift a chair of its place or when a chair is dragged to the other
end of the house. Later in the story, sounds and murmurs are growing.

When the murmurs invade the house completely, the brothers had the need to get rid of those
objects owned by the whispers. None of these actions worked, because the buzz focused on other
different object and they lost the most of their personal belongings.

In no place of the story is explained where the whispers come from to disrupt the life and peace of
the brothers. The only thing that clarifies the story, is the ease with which the characters left their
properties and even their own house, when felt invaded by an unknown nature that they could
not understand

Irene and his brother expressed a special taste for some areas of their home. They had their
favorite places, such as the study or the secondary living room, where the Narrator went daily to
read his works from Europe. Before resigning to housing, both brothers believed that the only
place where there would be whispers would be in the rear of the old House. However, it was not
true, because the whispers were everywhere.

The frequency of the noise and the waiver of the home in which they grew are the end of the story
“House taken over” when the brothers threw the keys at a sewer so that no one else could enter
to the house, which was already taken by the whispers.