History Literature / AndHeBuiltACrookedHouse

--->'''There Was A Crooked Man'''

* ActuallyAGoodIdea: Despite her determination to hate anything Teal has to show them, when Mrs. Bailey sees the gorgeous descending staircase she begins to like the house. By the time they enter the second floor she is describing things as “quaint” and suggesting how she would decorate the house.
* AlienGeometries: A four-dimensional house.
* AlienLandmass: [[spoiler:Subverted when the protagonists finally escape the house only to find themselves in a strange desert landscape with bizarre tree-like vegetation. Turns out they're in Joshua Tree National Park.]]

* BiggerOnTheInside: The house after it folds into a tesseract.
* {{Bizarrchitecture}} - The tesseract house after it folds in on itself.

* ImpossiblyCompactFolding: The tesseract.
* LiteraryAllusionTitle: To the nursery rhyme ''There Was A Crooked Man.''

* NothingIsScarier: "Teal lifted the blind a few inches. He saw nothing, and raised it a little more — still nothing. Slowly he raised it until the window was fully exposed. They gazed out at — nothing. Nothing, nothing at all. What color is nothing? Don't be silly! What shape is it? Shape is an attribute of something. It had neither depth nor form. It had not even blackness. It was nothing."

-->''"Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world. They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but point to California as the focus of the infection. Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit the charge but explain hastily, 'It's Hollywood. It's not our fault, we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just grew.' The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon 'where we keep the violent cases.' The Canyonites — the brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy building and rebuilding their slap-happy unfinished houses — regard with faint contempt the dull creatures who live down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live."''
* WeAreNotGoingThroughThatAgain: When Teal announces that he has another idea for a house, Bailey tries to deck him.

* {{Fainting}}: Mrs. Bailey repeatedly does the Emotional Faint variety throughout the story.

* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace

"—And He Built a Crooked House— is a short story by Creator/RobertAHeinlein, first published in 1941.

* AlienGeometries

-->There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.\\

''—And He Built a Crooked House—'' is a short story by Creator/RobertAHeinlein, first published in 1941.

* OnlyInAmerica: The introduction to the story is the perfect explanation of this trope (see trope page for the quote).

* {{Bizarrchitecture}}

!!Provides Examples Of:

''--And He Built a Crooked House'' is a short story by Creator/RobertAHeinlein, first published in 1941.

* AuthorAvatar - Heinlein makes a brief allusion to himself as the "Hermit of Hollywood" who lives across the street from Teal.

* {{Fainting}} - Mrs. Bailey repeatedly does the Emotional Faint variety throughout the story.
* GoingInCircles - Teal winds up chasing himself around the entire tesseract several times before retrieving his own dropped hat and realizing what's happened.
* HenpeckedHusband - Bailey shows signs of this as his wife can be quite shrewish. However, given the events of the story, her dislike of Teal may be well placed.

* INeedAFreakingDrink - When Teal hands Bailey a shot of liquor to help revive his wife, he downs it himself.
* ImpossiblyCompactFolding - The tesseract.
* LiteraryAllusionTitle - To the nursery rhyme ''There Was A Crooked Man.''
* OnlyInAmerica - The introduction to the story is the perfect explanation of this trope (see trope page for the quote).