House Taken Over Summary

The story’s narrator lives with his sister, Irene, in their family’s home. The house is large enough to hold at least eight people, but the siblings live alone because neither ever married. Together they keep a firm schedule, rising early to clean the dust that continually gathers in the giant house, especially in the larger communal rooms at the back of the building. In the evenings, the narrator reads French literature, and his sister knits all kinds of useful garments, though she produces more than the two could ever wear. Irene never seems to leave the house, but the narrator runs into town occasionally on Saturdays to buy her new skeins of wool and to check the bookstore for new French books.

One night, when the narrator gets out of bed to make some tea, he hears a peculiar, muffled sound in the rear rooms. Believing an invading force has taken over the back of the house, he closes the door separating it from the front bedrooms, kitchen, and bathroom.

The siblings agree they will live in the front rooms only, and their home and life seems to shrink even further. At first, they miss the belongings they left in the lost portion of the house, but they adjust quickly. They no longer need to clean and they complete all their cooking in the morning, so they have little to do for most of the day. The narrator spends most of his evenings watching Irene knit. Their routine becomes so streamlined that they no longer need to think in order to survive, and they rarely speak; they merely exist, quietly. At night, the only sounds come from Irene’s sleep-talking and the narrator’s tossing and turning.

This simplistic, dismal existence appears as though it will continue indefinitely until the narrator gets up for a glass of water one night. Like before, he hears an odd sound, but this time in the front portion of the house. Irene notices that her brother has frozen in the hallway and gets up to listen with him. When the two are sure the mysterious presence is in either the kitchen or bathroom and coming closer, they run together to the vestibule, locking the entrance door behind them. Only then do they realize they have left with nothing but their clothing. Irene’s knitting is caught in the door and cannot be rescued, and the narrator recalls with dismay the 15,000 pesos he left in his dresser. Still, they refuse to go back into the house, instead abandoning it forever. The narrator sees on his wristwatch that it is 11pm, then he and a weeping Irene walk off into the night.