Julio Cortazar's Fear Of Fear

People become scared in their own minds because of paranoia and their own imagination. For instance, say you’re home alone and don’t have any animals and you hear a noise--your first emotion is most likely fear. Although you didn’t go check what made the sound or why it was made, you get scared and stay in one area until someone gets home or you call someone, it’s human nature. We make ourselves scared when there (usually) isn’t anything to be scared about. On the other hand, we purposely make ourselves scared sometimes by going to haunted houses, watching thriller movies, reading scary books, or watching horror shows.
In order to scare us, books, movies, and television shows will take the most ordinary things and make it into a monster. For instance, the movie IT takes a clown and turns it into

a child eating predator. Some people had been scared of clowns before the movie came out, but afterwards, it definitely made more people terrified. Also, in the short story The Fall of the House of Usher, there is a crevice in the house that goes straight down, and at the end of the story, when the Usher siblings die, the house “dies” with them. This can create a paranoia that if there is a fissure in a stone or brick wall, it could collapse. This might also be the case in the short story House Taken Over.
In House Taken Over, someone or something is invading the siblings’ very large house and the siblings end up leaving. At first, it starts towards the end of the house away from them (on the other side of a large oak door) and then it gets on their side. They then have to lock the door and live in a small area, leaving many of their items behind. Once it invaded the final section, they left their house and locked the door from the outside and threw the key down the drain. They never said what was invading them, but there are a number of ideas. For instance, the ghosts of the grandparents that passed away in the house, rats, or maybe even Nazi’s.
According the Business Insider, in 1946, to get away from war crime punishments, many Nazi’s fled to Argentina via ratlines (escape routes). It is believed that Nazi’s raided house when they arrived to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Later, in June of 2017, investigators found more than 75 Nazi artifacts near Buenos Aires in a suburban home. These artifacts were found behind a bookshelf that was covering a door designed as a wall. According to the investigators, these artifacts seem to have belonged to “high-ranking” Nazi’s. If that is the case, the high-ranking Nazi’s probably went for the high-ranking houses when they arrived.
The siblings’ house from House Taken Over was very large which is why I believe that the Nazi’s are what invaded the house.

Since the Nazi’s had been in Argentina in 1946, and the short story was written in 1946, Julio Cortazar could have made a connection to the invasion of Nazi’s in Argentina.
The siblings in House Taken Over knew what was taking over their house and since the Nazi’s were going to Argentina at that time, it was probably the Nazi’s and that’s why they were scared about them invading, but calm at the same time because they expected it. In the end of the story, the siblings left their house before trying to fight back. This was a sign of paranoia inside their own minds; they didn’t think before they left, they just left without anything.
People get scared of their own thoughts and paranoia, as seen in House Taken Over. People’s imagination overpower what’s actually happening most of the time in real life. This is caused by scary movies, books, and television shows. When people don’t think before they do things because of fear, it often leads to worse situations. Therefore, I believe that our own mindset and imagination is what leads to fear and bad

scenarios.