Wendy Bousfield's Reviews > House of Stairs

This young adult novel (1974) reflects Cold War paranoia: apprehension that the government will brainwash unwilling subjects into perfectly controllable weapons of war. Five sixteen-year-old orphans find themselves in a sterile maze-like environment, consisting entirely of stairs and landings. (Wikipedia notes that the setting is based on Escher’s (1953) lithograph: Relativity: http://www.scottmcd.net/artanalysis/?...). Besides one pool of water (toilet, drinking water, and bath), a machine with flashing lights sporadically dispenses pellets of food in response to behaviors that, through trial and error, the children learn. At first, the machine ejects food when the children engage in a stylized dance. As time goes by, however, the machine will only produce food if, in addition to the dance, the children act aggressively toward one another. When it becomes clear that they will be fed only by escalating cruelty, the children divide into two groups. Remaining near the machine, Oliver, Abigail, and Blossom create for themselves a kind of Lord of the Flies hierarchy. These three continue to eat by finding ways to inflict pain on one another. Peter and Lola, in contrast, remove themselves to a distant part of the maze, supporting one another in the decision to starve rather than become monsters.

Lola and Peter are emotionally engaging characters. A tough nonconformist, Lola smokes and gleefully reminisces about tricks she played on the repressive keepers at her orphanage. She responds to an alien environment by exploring, seeking to learn the rules that govern it, and jogging to keep fit. Peter, a timid, insecure child, retreats into a dream “room”: a memory of an orphanage where his friend Jasper loved and cared for him. When Peter meets Oliver, he develops a crush on this handsome, narcissistic boy. Delicately, the book hints that Peter’s attraction to both boys is sexual. Peter and Lola, however, strengthen one another in resisting corruption.

A major weakness in HOUSE OF STAIRS, however, is its depiction of the villains, Oliver and Blossom. They do not change in any way because both are calculating, cruel, and self-absorbed from the beginning. Though the machine rewards their cruel actions, it does not corrupt them: Oliver and Blosson are already monstrous. The privileged daughter of government officials, obese Blossom seeks only to make the machine produce as much food as possible and spitefully to turn the other children against one another. At the beginning, Oliver sets out to shame and manipulate insecure, passive Abigail, alternately treating her seductively and indifferently. Because most of us justify evil actions with self-deceptions and rationalizations, I found Oliver and Blossom’s single-mindedness wooden and unbelievable.

Until the very end, the HOUSE OF STAIRS only hints obliquely at the dystopian world outside the environment in which the children are trapped. Only the most elite, like Blossom’s family, live in single-family houses. The other 99% struggle to subsist in an overpopulated world, where nourishing food is scarce. Because even children of rich parents end up in orphanages, the novel suggests human life has become so cheap that children are not cherished. HOUSE OF STAIRS reflects Cold War fears that the government was conducting dehumanizing experiments on human beings to advance the war effort.

Reading HOUSE OF STAIRS in 2015, I found it a period piece, reflecting old-fashioned preoccupations and literary tropes. (Of course, we DO face the problem of returning servicemen who, successfully conditioned to regard Arab opponents as non-human, do not undergo “unconditioning” before returning to civilian life.) I was glad to be introduced to William Sleator (1945-2011), but do not think I shall seek out other novels.