Essay Questions

What is the meaning of the scene with the albatross?

Albatrosses hold many symbolic meanings in literature, from representing freedom and wanderlust to being a negative symbol carrying death and disaster. The most known symbolic representation of albatross in the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” gives albatrosses a symbolic meaning of a mental burden. All these things considered, the mention of an albatross in this novel can’t be seen as accidental. The facts that are known are that the main character, Piranesi, is stuck living alone in a vast architectural construction he refers to as a House. It is also known that the only human company is a weekly visit from another man, whom he calls the Other. The fragmented knowledge of mundane and modern things while stuck in some form of amnesic state gives the impression that things aren’t what Piranesi is telling us they are, he is therefore a direct unreliable narrator. He is entrapped both physically and psychologically, and his fantasizing about merging with the albatross and becoming an Angel, refers to both his innermost need for freedom and his psychological burden that he suppressed with the help of the House.

What is the significance of Piranesi equating the House to the World?

The significance of Piranesi’s view of the House as the World itself is both literal in reference to the plot of the novel, and a symbolic representation of fear, anxiety and depression. The House represents the World to Piranesi because it is the only place where he exists-the outside world is unsafe, or it doesn’t exist. He is literally unable to leave the House, reasons for which are revealed as the novel progresses. Symbolically, this equation of the House to the World in itself is a representation of very real struggles that people deal with like anxiety, depression or trauma, afraid to leave their house, which, as a result, becomes their world in the literal sense.

What does the ending of the novel in reference to the House represent?

Piranesi still visits the House from time to time at the end. It is a place he gladly goes back to because it is a place where his identity was born-Matthew Rose Sorensen is a façade he puts on for the real world. This affection toward the House and its statues, till the very end, represents the need of preserving of the past because the House itself is described as a world where the past of humankind is kept preserved.