The House Behind Analysis

How does the author explore the effect of the murder upon the residents of both houses?

“The House Behind”, is about two different houses and the events that occur, that affect those that were involved in the incident including everyone else around it. The narrator in the story is a resident of the house behind and observes the occurrences there. The two houses are of very different economic standing, one is very wealthy and the other is very poor. The story explains their relations with each other and how one situation can affect the two sides differently. The author explores the effect of the murder upon the residents of the house behind and the house in front by writing their contrasting differences and how they acted, by showing how all the people reacted to situation, and by showing the lingering effect it had on the residents afterward.

Before the author could show how much effect the murder had on both houses, he wrote about the differences between them first. First of all, the two houses were very different economically. The front house is wealthy, and the accommodations are “lofty and comfortable”, however, the house behind has “cramped and graceless” apartments that either face “the gray stone of the city wall” or they “look across the courtyard into the kitchens and bathrooms of the front house” More importantly, the residents of the house behind feel “oppressed” by the ones in the front house because the residents in the front house are people who work for the government, and the residents in the back are the proletariat, the lower class. Naturally, for such different houses to live side by side the less superior one would feel oppressed. Superiority is shown when the narrator states, “she never should have spoken to him--- most of them don’t speak to us.” this is as though the residents of the back house are only allowed to speak if those of the front house initiated a conversation. It seems as though only the wealthy have the right to do