Spoiler question about the ending of Hell House by Richard Matheson

Submitted by dadamssg t3_y840z4 in books

I didn't track Fischer's deduction at the end of the book and I'm hoping i'm just missing something.

Florence's spirit flips the bible to the passage with "If thy right eye offend thee..." and he rushes to play the recording back to a previous sitting to the "Extremes and limits. Terminations and extremities" bit, jumps up and exclaims "She knew!" before rushing to the chapel to confront Belasco. It's eventually revealed that Belasco hated how short he was so he had his legs removed to use taller, artificial ones. He's been the sole spirit behind the haunting the whole time.

I don't understand this sequence of events. It seems like it's supposed to be a clever deduction by Fischer but it doesn't make any sense to me. How did Fischer connect that bible passage to what was on the recording? What did Florence know("She knew!") and how exactly did that help Fischer figure anything out? I get that the bible passage relates to Belasco's legs but it doesn't make sense to me why she chose to hint at that to Fischer.

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treaderofthedust t1_isytihd wrote

As far as I can tell the logic goes something like this: >!Having deduced that Belasco was motivated by ego, Fischer intuits that he might be compensating for something. Florence's phrase "terminations and extremities" implies "cutting off limbs", and "if thy right eye offend thee" adds the idea of despising a body part so much that you get rid of it... Yeah, it's a stretch.!<

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dadamssg OP t1_iszaf76 wrote

Replying to treaderofthedust (#145,107)

bummer haha. >!That whole clue and his leg situation seems kinda irrelevant: why Florence felt the need to have Fischer learn his ego drove him to remove his legs. The big reveal was that it was Belasco himself haunting the place and we don't even get to understand his motivation other than that he's depraved(?). We just learn that he has a big ego...?!<

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MagnifyingLens t1_iszc3qb wrote

Just a quick aside for those who've read the book...the 1973 movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Hell_House) is an excellent adaptation.

The movie adds some additional reasoning from Fischer to explain his logic. I don't recall if it was in the book or not. >!He notes that Florence's legs were broken and that a member of the previous expedition shattered his legs and I think one or two other similar instances.!<

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