We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

I would tell him he needs to GO. After killing 4 members of her family and permanently damaging a fifth, it shouldn’t be hard for her to off Charles.

anything I said to him might perhaps help him to get back his thin grasp on our house.

“You are evil,” I said to Charles. “You are a ghost and a demon.”

“You are a very selfish man, John, perhaps even a scoundrel, and overly fond of the world’s goods;

I was held tight and could not see her.

You are a young bastard and I desire that you return to your father, who, to my shame, is my brother Arthur, and tell him I said so.

“That has all been forgotten, Uncle Julian; Constance and I—”

Question - an engagement?

“My niece Mary Katherine died in an orphanage, of neglect, during her sister’s trial for murder.

Julian’s disassociation.

Imagine this scene on stage in a play! Haha

He was clearly baffled, unable to grasp his fingers tightly around anything he saw or heard; it was a joyful sight, to see the first twistings and turnings of the demon caught, and I was very proud of Uncle Julian.

“Punish me? You mean send me to bed without my dinner?”

Yes!

the summerhouse.

Charles had blackened the world and only the summerhouse would do.

The ground was black and wet and nothing buried would have been quite comfortable.

Haha sweet.

the poor flowers planted here once had either died or grown into huge tasteless wild things.

asked to have it burned down.

I sat on the floor and placed all of them correctly in my mind, in the circle around the dining-room table.

Slowly I began to listen to them talking.

“I have heard, Lucy, of disobedient children being sent to their beds without dinner as a punishment. That must not be permitted with our Mary Katherine.”

Haha creepy.

I knew she was tired of listening.

I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.

There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

I wondered if he had looked around and around the altered room, trying to find something familiar,

The saucers were pink, with gold leaves around the rim;

“They belong in the pantry,” I said. “Not put around the house.”

I brushed the saucer and the pipe off the table into the wastebasket and they fell softly onto the newspapers he had brought into the house.

Is the fire an accident? Or not? Question creepy. Watching arson now, is different then being told about murders in the past. Jackson gives us both!

I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes—the left—saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night.

“Will you make me a cake with pink frosting?” I asked Constance. “With little gold leaves around the edge?

Same as the old saucers given to Charles for an ashtray. Why? Question

I knew he was happy because he had been so discourteous to Charles.

Haha mee too let it out! You bastard!

Haha

Jim Donell,

bringing filth and confusion and danger into our house.

Charles’

Haha

I saw faces laughing, and faces that looked frightened,

Haha

Haha

Charles’ fire

A nice addition in the screenplay: “The sounds of their hate was another kind of fire, moving through the bones of our house.”

Charles’ fire.

When I listened particularly for the fire I could hear it, a singing hot noise upstairs, but over and around it, smothering it, were the voices of the men inside and the voices of the people watching outside and the distant sound of cars on the driveway.

she was excited, I thought,

Jim Donell

Because that’s what firemen DO. Even Jim Donell. Haha.

the voices inside were surer, less sharp, almost pleased, and the voices outside were lower, and disappointed.

Are we to assume these are real voices? So cruel and nasty? Or are we to wonder if they might be MK’s solipsistic paranoia? Question

Oh, that’s awful.

Above it all, most horrible, was the laughter.

Like a nursery rhyme, see p. 15.

I am on the moon, I thought, please let me be on the moon.