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The House on the Hill Analysis

Cesare Pavese

Places Discussed

(Critical Guide to Settings and Places in Literature)

*Turin

*Turin. Principal city of northwestern Italy’s Piedmont region that provides the narrator, Corrado, with his occupation and his status as an intellectual; however, both the city and Corrado are threatened by wartime instability. Corrado’s work as a schoolteacher, as well as the school where he teaches, are given only a shadowy identity. Despite the increasingly difficult situation in Turin, Corrado’s description of the city is remote. The city is the only place where Corrado admits the possibility of love; however, two early affairs in Turin have left him with unhappy memories, and much of the early part of the novel concerns his attempt to redeem the rashness and futility of an early relationship with Cate, a former lover from Turin’s suburbs whom he meets again by chance after eight years.

House on the hill

House on the hill. Place outside Turin where Corrado seeks safety from air raids on the city. The relative safety of the distant suburban hills moves many people to spend their nights outside the city in temporary quarters. Corrado takes lodgings in a hilltop owned by Elvira, a middle-aged woman who tends his needs with an anxiety that betrays her interest in marrying him. Although the hill on which Elvira’s house stands is only one hill location among many, it is the one that best allows Cesare Pavese to illuminate his character’s ambivalence about the Italian political landscape, by showing...

(The entire section is 545 words.)

Bibliography

(Great Characters in Literature)

Biasin, Gian-Paolo. The Smile of the Gods: A Thematic Study of Cesare Pavese’s Works. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968. Reviews the author’s career and accomplishments. Examines Pavese’s techniques of linking classical themes with modern persons and events.

Bondanella, Peter, and Julia Conaway Bondanella, eds. Dictionary of Italian Literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. Provides the background material needed to begin a study of Pavese and his novels. Provides a brief but perceptive study of The House on the Hill, especially in relationship to Pavese and existentialism.

Flint, R. W. Introduction to Selected Works, by Cesare Pavese. Translated by R. W. Flint. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968. The introduction to a standard edition of Pavese’s works in English, helps to establish the parameters for judging the writer’s works.

Lajolo, Davide. An Absurd Vice: A Biography of Cesare Pavese. Translated and edited by Mario and Mark Pietralunga. New York: New Directions, 1983. An intensely personal view of Pavese’s life and career. Despite its prejudices, it provides some interesting insights into The House on the Hill.

O’Healy, Aine. Cesare Pavese. Boston: Twayne, 1988. An excellent introduction to Pavese’s works. Places The House on the Hill into its proper place within his career. For an introductory volume, it is remarkably complete.

Thompson, Doug. Cesare Pavese: A Study of the Major Novels and Poems. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Examines The House on the Hill in the light of Pavese’s ambivalent relationship with the Italian Communist Party, and his refusal, or perhaps inability, to translate his own anti-Fascist views into action.

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