Finch House

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## Introduction

**The Finch House** is a horrible residence within the woods on Orcas Island. It is a large building that branches its rooms and other structures to its left diagonally and upwards due to the house holding the timeline of various Finch family members. Since each Finch has a distinct personality, the rooms each have a different look and story to it, ranging from a simple kitchen to a sky-high art room.

The residence has been abandoned for an estimated seven years and has not been cared for since the departure of Edith Finch and Dawn Finch, who leave behind Edie Finch because she tried to convince them to stay despite a "curse" lurking about the residence and the Finch name. Despite being abandoned for such a time, the residence is structurally sound, has a clean, untouched interior, and is safe to walk through even when one is at the top levels of the building. The house also has solar panels powering the third and fourth floor, so the electricity is still working in the upper levels of the house despite the lower levels being unpowered.

After the death of her mother Dawn, Edith is given a mysterious key by her to the house which opens a secret passage, and as a result, Edith is able to explore the house and learn more about her family through the preserved rooms, beginning *What Remains of Edith Finch*.

## History

### The Old House

The old house is the house that Odin Finch arrived in Washington on, in 1937. But before he could reach Orcas island, a huge storm sunk the house and Odin died with it. Only his daughter Edie, her husband Sven, and their daughter Molly survived. 80 years later, the house is still visible with its roof peeking out at low tides.

### The New House

After completing the cemetery, Sven Finch built a simple two-story house with a third-floor attic. The garage was not completed until after 1947. Sven also built secret passages between the rooms, including hiding a key to the basement in a music box for his daughter Barbara.

After Molly died in 1947, Edie decided to make the rooms of those who had passed away into shrines devoted to their memories, with a small memorial consisting of a portrait painted on a wood slice and some form of creative writing (such as a journal, comic book, letter, or poem) dedicated to their last moments.

The house underwent its first renovation somewhere between 1961 and 1968, when the fridge was made into a secret entrance to Walter's underground bunker. Around the same time, an extra floor was added to the house for Sam and his wife and children.

Another major renovation happened in 2002, when Dawn moved herself and her children back into the house and another floor needed to be added. The addition included a deck for gardening, a classroom, a "castle" bedroom for Milton, and a precarious tower with more bedrooms and a small kitchen/dining area.

In 2004, after Milton disappeared, Dawn Finch sealed all the extra rooms on the second and third floors with expanding foam, preventing access to the rooms of deceased family members. Edie retaliated and drilled peepholes in the doors, allowing people to peer inside.

At the time of the game, the house had sat abandoned for seven years. Edith and her mother Dawn left most of their belongings behind when they moved out, and the power had been shut down the day they left. However, the third floor's solar panels provide an alternate source of electricity to the upper floors. Accommodations had also been made for Edie, such as a chairlift on the staircase and a ramp on the side of the front porch.

## Appearance

### Exterior

The exterior of the home is surrounded by a forest, where even from far away you can see the crooked tower for Edith, Milton, and Lewis Finch's rooms. There are two pathways to the home: a cliffside road to the garage and a path through the forest. When Edith explores the house, the road is blocked by a chain link fence, but a section is bent - Edith remarks that someone else had hopped the fence before her. Just beyond the mailbox, which is shaped like the house, is an older metal gate to prevent trespassing, along with a sign warning of video surveillance. The forest is dotted with ponds filled with frogs and ample trees for lumber - several of the trees closest to the house had been cut down, leaving stumps.

There is a wooden car shelter at the end of the driveway, with stacks of firewood and a basketball hoop. To the far right of the house is a pond where the remnants of a slide in the shape of a dragon lie. There are ample steps leading up to the front porch, with a ramp retrofitted on the side.

### Interior

Edith enters the house through the garage, where the family station wagon is parked, covered by a sheet. The garage was also used for storage, with a small workbench where a peephole is in the midst of being constructed (likely for Walter's room, which was never sealed and therefore does not have a peephole).

The first floor consists of a kitchen, dining room, living room, and library. When Edith explores the house, the kitchen is filled with canned salmon from Lewis's job and leftover Chinese, as a local Chinese restaurant was one of the only places that would deliver to their house. The dining room is left the way it was the night Edie and Dawn left, including a broken dish, spilled wine, and rotting leftover food. In the living room, a picture of the old house is displayed on the mantel of the fireplace, which Edie claims is from the old house.

The second floor consists of four bedrooms, which are sealed but have peepholes listing the birth and death dates of former inhabitants. Each bedroom door is painted according to passions held in life, such as animals for Molly, space for Calvin, or Hollywood for Barbara. The second-floor bathroom is also sealed as a memorial for baby Gregory. The only door that hadn't been sealed is Walter's, which contains the locked book that, when unlocked, reveals the secret passageways. A balcony overlooks the living room on the first floor, with a section that had been haphazardly repaired after Barbara's death. There is a set of stairs leading to the third-floor attic, but the door had been locked by Dawn the day she and Edith left, and the area is never explored.

An addition to the third floor consists of Sam's room and a shared room for Dawn and her brothers. The doors to both rooms are also sealed and can only be traversed through a passageway on the side of the attic. Sam's room can be accessed from the roof of the garage, with a ladder leading to his porch. The shared bedroom has a loft, with a sliding door that opens to the fourth floor.

The fourth floor, added after Dawn returned to the house with her children, has a deck where the family would grow different herbs and potted plants. There is also a small classroom with a memorial for Dawn's husband Sanjay. For Milton's tenth birthday, Edie built him a "castle," a small two-story tower atop Sam's room where Milton could paint.

The tower, which consists of the remaining rooms, is appended on the side of the house via a network of scaffolding. At the bottom, acting roughly as the fifth floor, is a speedboat that had been repurposed into Lewis's bedroom. A winding exterior staircase stretches up to the sixth floor, which contains a simple bedroom for Dawn and a small kitchen/dining room. Edith's floor is a loft on the seventh floor, reached by a winding staircase and a ladder.

## Books

Books are a major component of the Finches' lives, whether through the sharing of their personal stories or through collections that relate to each person's interests and dreams. Many books appear in multiple locations, showing that the Finches often shared their favorite books or engaged in their family members' interests as well as their own.

Certain books hide the entrances to secret passageways. The first is *20,000 Leagues Under the Sea*, found in Walter's old bedroom, which unlocks the path to Molly's room. The second is a pop-up book by Sven Finch called *There's a Secret in this Bathroom*.

## Trivia

* Despite being abandoned for 7 years at the beginning of the game, the house is in a suprisingly good shape. This is most likely a development oversight, but there are theories explaining it like the curse keeping the building together.

* Odin taking the house across sea might be a distant reference to the 2009 Disney Movie : “Up”, and how Russel and Dug tried taking the house to the sky. This is far fetched but they both did it in order to get somewhere.

## References

1. ↑ A reference to the Pied Piper
2. ↑ Milton shares many of the same books as Lewis, implying the Milton may have shared his brother's passion for video games
3. ↑ Likely a reference to Dungeons & Dragons