Doors and Gates Symbol Analysis

Gates and doors symbolize the act of confronting and understanding difficult truths. Throughout the novel, characters have important revelations or achieve closure when they pass through—or fail to pass through—doors or gates. When Sutpen is a young boy, he loses his innocence about the correlation between race, class, and respect when a Black enslaved man denies him entry through the front door of the mansion of the wealthy planter whom Sutpen’s family works for. It’s Sutpen’s failure to pass through that door that ignites the ambition—his “design”—that consumes the rest of his life. Doors also play a key role in Sutpen’s refusal to acknowledge Charles Bon as his legitimate heir: Sutpen resolves to become wealthy and powerful to ensure that no son of his will ever be disrespected or denied entry through a door ever again. Accepting Bon would upend that goal, for Bon, as a man with Black ancestry, would be denied entry to countless doors in the pre-war culture of the South.

Meanwhile, in the novel’s present, Quentin dreads passing through the door when he and Miss Rosa arrive at Sutpen’s estate to discover the identity of the person she’s been hiding there (Henry)—an action that would symbolically force Quentin to confront the painful and confusing inherited past he’s had thrust upon him simply by being born in the South. Finally, the gate to Sutpen’s Hundred holds great symbolic value—it’s where Henry murders Bon to prevent him from marrying Judith. In murdering Bon at the gate, Henry denies Bon entry into Sutpen’s dynasty via a marriage to Judith, an action that reflects Henry’s drive to prioritize the preservation of the social and racial hierarchies of the pre-war culture into which he was born.