History Literature / TheHotelNewHampshire

* {{Anorgasmia}}: Subverted with "Screaming Annie" [[spoiler: the hooker who fakes very loud orgasms. It later turns out they were not fake]].

* FormerlyFat / FormerlyFit: Played with. John, after being unable to help Franny [[spoiler:when she was raped]], decides to become stronger and follows his grandfather's muscle-building regimen, which includes a heavy diet of bananas, milk, oranges, bananas, pasta, rice, fish, bananas, hot cereal, ice cream, and [[RunningGag bananas]]. Such a brutal diet change makes him gain twenty pounds in two months, all fat, making him stand at 170 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches for a fourteen years old. Despite his family's teasing and incomprehension, he followed his grandfather's advice that one must "beef up before stripping down". After a long, hard work he ends up dropping his extra twenty pounds by fifteen, before growing of two inches at seventeen, and staying in this toned, fit and muscular 150 pounds shape for the rest of his life.

It could be said to be Irving's most typical novel; Wiki/ThatOtherWiki had a chart of all the recurring motifs in Irving's fiction (bears, prostitution, the city of Vienna, and so on) and ''The Hotel New Hampshire'' was the only one of his books to contain ''all'' of them.

* [[spoiler: DecapitatedArmy: What the terrorists-radicals in Vienna end up as. While taking the Berry family hostage, their leader Ernst makes the mistake of revealing he slept with Franny while simultaneously mocking her, in front of her father. After one taunt too much, Win Berry smacks Ernst with a baseball bat: one hit is enough to kill him, and immediately the terrorist groups starts to break down, arguing with each other while trying to blindly follow the original plan. This confusion ultimately helps to bring their brutal downfall.]]

* Similarly, John [[spoiler: dreamt of his mother's death as her being taken away into the sea on the boat of [[TheGrimReaper the man in the white jacket]], and that right before she died when her plane crashed into the sea.]]

* [[spoiler: TerroristsWithoutACause: The [[WesternTerrorists Symposium on the East-West Relationships]] ultimately turn out to be this. Initially described as left-wing radicals between the DirtyCommunists and the BombThrowingAnarchist, writing pamphlets and making threatening phone calls, their ideology is never clearly named and their own ideas are very vague, involving a lot of words like decadence and revolution, and seemingly not going beyond a desire to change entirely and fundamentaly society. It is later revealed that the radicals plan a terrorist attack on the opera of Vienna during a fully-booked night - when asked about it, their leader Ernst explains they want to gain an audience with this massacre, but when asked about what message they want to spread he refuses - or rather cannot answer. Because, as a horrified John realizes, Ernst and his fellow terrorists are in truth only interested in having an audience, not giving any message. Whatever ideology they use, it is all just abstract and blurry excuses for causing massacres. They are completely insane.
** Played with in that after the failure of their terrorist attack, the journalists, authorities and politics of Vienna spent a lot of time debating and discussing what the radicals were trying to say, express or mean with their actions, without ever finding any true answer - because there aren't any in the first place.]]
* UnproblematicProstitution: The Berry children initially believe this is what goes on in Vienna, due to how the ''fin de siècle'' Vienna is described as a very sexual city and they learned that prostitution was legal there. However upon arriving there, they discover all of the darkness, grimness and repulsive things associated with prostitution, from miscarriages and abortions to violence and pedophilia - and soon before leaving they end up discovering to their surprise that prostitution isn't actually ''legal'' at the time, simply tolerated by the authorities.
* A more straightforward example with Ronda Ray, the maid from the first Hotel New Hampshire. She freely and frequently has sexual relationships with men for money, she seems perfectly used and happy with it, she even seduces and agrees to have relationships with the underage John Berry (who was merely fourteen at the time) for money... However it is later revealed that [[spoiler: Ronda ignored that prostitution was illegal in the United-States, and when she learns it she is immediately ashamed of herself and refuses to continue her relationship with John.]]

* {{Asexuality}}: It's never spelled out in so many words, but Lily is definitely an example. She has no interest in sex, and is at times described as directly prudish.
* ArcWords: "Sorrow floats," "Keep passing the open windows."

* CheckovsSkill: John starts weight-lifting and obsessing over becoming strong and muscular, after his sister Franny [[spoiler: gets raped by Chipper Dove and he is too weak to defend or help her]]. Weight-lifting stays his main passion and hobby throughout the novel and seems to have no ultimate consequence than becoming his personal quirk and turning him into TheBigGuy of the family. However, [[spoiler: when his family is taken hostage by a group of terrorists, his incredibly strong muscles and years-long training, coupled with the rage caused by the situation, allows him to strangle to death one of the terrorists.]]

* TheBigGuy: What John becomes in the family after he picked up weight-lifting as his obsession and got more and more muscular throughout the years - in fact every time someone needs to move something heavy John is the one called to help. [[spoiler: Takes a darker turn during the HostageSituation in Vienna where his great strength allows him to strangle a terrorist to death.]]

* [[DecapitatedArmy: What the terrorists-radicals in Vienna end up as. While taking the Berry family hostage, their leader Ernst makes the mistake of revealing he slept with Franny while simultaneously mocking her, in front of her father. After one taunt too much, Win Berry smacks Ernst with a baseball bat: one hit is enough to kill him, and immediately the terrorist groups starts to break down, arguing with each other while trying to blindly follow the original plan. This confusion ultimately helps to bring their brutal downfall.]]

* [[spoiler: TerroristsWithoutACause: The [[WesternTerrorists Symposium on the East-West Relationships]] ultimately turn out to be this. Initially described as left-wing radicals between the DirtyCommunists and the BombThrowingAnarchist, writing pamphlets and making threatening phone calls, their ideology is never clearly named and their own ideas are very vague, involving a lot of words like decadence and revolution, and seemingly not going beyond a desire to change entirely and fundamentaly society. It is later revealed that the radicals plan a terrorist attack on the opera of Vienna during a fully-booked night - when asked about it, their leader Ernst explains they want to gain an audience with this massacre, but when asked about what message they want to spread he refuses - or rather cannot answer. Because, as a horrified John realizes, Ernst and his fellow terrorists are in truth only interested in having an audience, not giving any message. Whatever ideology they use, it is all just abstract and blurry excuses for causing massacres. They are completely insane.]]

* TerroristsWithoutACause: The radicals in [[UsefulNotes/{{Austria}} Vienna]] are nominally Communist, but they're extremely vague about what their actual goals are.

* KnownOnlyByTheirNickname: A surprisingly high percentage of the cast. Most notable is youngest Berry sibling Egg, who earned his nickname before he was even born, when his siblings asked their mother [[TheTalk where babies came from.]] Mary Berry explained that the baby started as "a tiny egg," and the name stuck.

* AnimalMotifs: Bears. Two main characters of the novel are bears (sort of). The first is State o'Maine, an old trained bear that is part of the reason why the Berry parents married and had children, and became the family's first pet. The second is Susie, a woman that lives with the Berry family in Vienna and that dresses up and acts as a bear. But beyond these two major cases, the novel has several other references to bear more or less hidden: for example when John gets fat, he is compared to a "panda" and a "teddy bear" by his siblings and friends, while two characters of the novel (John's mother and an elderly Viennese prostitute) have collections of china bears.
** The family's dog Sorrow is also a recurring motif throughout the novel. The Berry family members keep using Sorrow's name as a metaphor and allegory for true sorrow ; the dog's taxidermized body keeps being involved in key events of the family's life and reappearing in the strangest of places (which cause the ArcWords "Sorrow floats" and "You can't kill Sorrow") ; and the dog's importance grows to a point that John and Frank perceive Susie's bear costume as a reincarnation or "return" of Sorrow.

** Averted however with several other characters, such as the first bear encountered in the novel, called State O'Maine simply because it is a "good name" ; or Dove Chipper who despite his first name turns out to be one of the worst Jerkass of the entire book.

* FormerlyFat / FormerlyFit: Played with. John, after being unable to help Franny [[spoiler:when she was raped]], decides to become stronger and follows his grandfather's muscle-building regimen, which includes a heavy diet of bananas, milk, oranges, bananas, pasta, rice, fish, bananas, hot cereal, ice cream, and [[RunningGag bananas]]. Such a brutal diet change makes him gain twenty pounds in two months, all fat, making him stand at 170 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches for a fifteen years old. Despite his family's teasing and incomprehension, he followed his grandfather's advice that one must "beef up before stripping down". After a long, hard work he ends up dropping his extra twenty pounds, before growing of two inches at seventeen, and staying in this toned, fit and muscular 150 pounds shape for the rest of his life.

* AnimalMotifs: Bears. Two main characters of the novel are bears (sort of). The first is State o'Maine, an old trained bear that is part of the reason why the Berry parents married and had children, and became the family's first pet. The second is Susie, a woman that lives with the Berry family in Vienna and that dresses up and acts as a bear. But beyond these two major cases, the novel has several other references to bear more or less hidden: for example when John gets fat, he is compared to a "panda" and a "teddy bear" by his siblings and friends, while two characters of the novel (John's mother and an elderly Viennan prostitute) have collections of china bears.

* AnimalMotifs: Bears. Two main characters of the novel are bears (sort of). The first is State o'Maine, an old trained bear that is part of the reason why the Berry parents married and had children, and became the family's first pet. The second is Susie, a woman from Vienna that dresses up and acts as a bear as a way to [[spoiler: cope with her rape]]. But beyond these two major cases, the novel has several other references to bear more or less hidden: for example when John gets fat, he is compared to a "panda" and a "teddy bear".

* FormerlyFat / Formerly Fit: Played with. John, after being unable to help Franny [[spoiler:when she was raped]], decides to become stronger and follows his grandfather's muscle-building regimen, which includes a heavy diet of bananas, milk, oranges, bananas, pasta, rice, fish, bananas, hot cereal, ice cream, and [[RunningGag bananas]]. Such a brutal diet change makes him gain twenty pounds in two months, all fat, making him stand at 170 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches for a fifteen years old. Despite his family's teasing and incomprehension, he followed his grandfather's advice that one must "beef up before stripping down". After a long, hard work he ends up dropping his extra twenty pounds, before growing of two inches at seventeen, and staying in this toned, fit and muscular 150 pounds shape for the rest of his life.

* FormerlyFat: John, after being unable to help Franny [[spoiler:when she was raped]], decides to become stronger and follows his grandfather's muscle-building regimen, which includes a heavy diet of bananas, milk, oranges, bananas, pasta, rice, fish, bananas, hot cereal, ice cream, and [[RunningGag bananas]]. Such a brutal diet change makes him gain twenty pounds in two months, all fat, making him stand at 170 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches for a fifteen years old. Despite his family's teasing and incomprehension, he followed his grandfather's advice that one must "beef up before stripping down". After a long, hard work he ends up dropping his extra twenty pounds, before growing of two inches at seventeen, and staying in this toned, fit and muscular 150 pounds shape for the rest of his life.

* RunningGag: Several of them run through the novel, though they are subtle and often morbid. For example, the several accidental [[spoiler: heart attacks at the first Hotel New Hampshire caused by the Berry children]], or how Fanny when confronted with a male assailant always goes for a very efficient GroinAttack.

* RunningGag: Several of them run through the novel, though they are subtle and often morbid. For example, the several accidental [[heart attacks at the first Hotel New Hampshire caused by the Berry children]].