Chapter 4: pp 24-26
Note: Because Chapter 4 is quite long and has a lot of depth, I'm splitting it into multiple posts.
p. 24 When the Navidsons return to the house to find it changed, their respective reactions are telling: Will reacts with near-amusement, while Karen "...draws both hands to her face as if she were about to pray." This aligns Karen with religion in the sense of appealing to a higher power, but not being godlike herself.
p. 25 Johnny admits to being affected by having read the unheimlich passage in English, though the same passage in German had no effect on him. Johnny has at multiple points in the text drawn attention to his need for translation. (See, for instance, Johnny's footnote on p. 19 where he writes, "Hollywood has always been mother's milk to Lude. Mother's tongue. Whatever. Unlike me, he never needs to translate....")
p. 26 In describing his encounter with the monster in the hallway, Johnny appeals to smell, sight, and sound, in that order, to paint a picture of what he feels. However, the only sense that actually gets a manifestation is smell; the others are cases of him emphasizing the absence of something.
Smell:
...something bitter & foul, something inhuman, reeking with so much rot & years, telling me in the language of nausea that I’m not alone.
Sight:
...try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don't let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision... right where you can't see it, something is quietly closing in on you...
Sound:
You can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound.
Johnny seems to be generally fairly attuned to smell (for instance, he notices the smell of Zampanò's apartment first, before other characteristics). Otherwise, this passage serves to illustrate the limitations of human senses. We are simply unable to perceive the monster that he describes, and it thus lurks just on the edges of our perception.