Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Door in the Wall, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Reality, Fantasy, Dreams, and Visions
Ambition and Material Success vs Contentment and Joy
The Lost Golden Past
Summary
Analysis
The narrator of the story, Redmond, explains that three months ago his friend Lionel Wallace told him the story of the door in the wall. At the time, just after a private dinner and in the glow of the table light, Redmond believed it entirely. But the morning after the conversation, Redmond feels differently. He is surprised that an earnest and serious man like Wallace was able to tell a fantastical story so convincingly. As he drinks his morning tea, Redmond finds himself trying to explain how Wallace’s “impossible reminiscences” could have felt so real the night before, and comes upon the explanation that the story in some way conveyed an experience that was not describable in any other way.
Redmond’s narration indicates to the reader that one of the primary focuses of the story will be the question of whether Wallace’s story is true. Redmond’s own admitted uncertainty about its truth introduces a tension between reality and fantasy. The story continually plays with this tension, such as the way that Redmond’s initial characterization of Wallace as a serious and practical person, not prone to pranks or fancies, suggests that his story should also be taken seriously. Meanwhile, note that Redmond does not at this point mention why he is thinking of Wallace this particular morning three months after their dinner, suggesting that there may be a reason he has not yet revealed to the reader.
Themes
Now, though, Redmond says, that whatever he thought that morning, he no longer doubts. He believes that Wallace fully believed his story to be true. Redmond is less sure whether the story was actually true and Wallace experienced some great privilege or whether instead Wallace was “the victim of some fantastic dream.” Even the facts of Wallace’s death do not completely clarify it for him. Redmond says that readers must make that judgment for themselves.
By placing the question of whether the door in the wall is real or not onto the reader, Wells initially indicates that the question is an important one to the story. And it places the reader as a kind of “judge” about what is real or fantastical. At this point in the story, Redmond—despite his own inner conflict about this question—presents the question as an answerable one with two available options—that Wallace is either right or hallucinating.
Themes
Redmond can’t recall exactly how they began to speak about the door in the wall, but he believes it emerged from his criticism of Wallace’s unreliability in supporting a political matter. To defend himself, Wallace haltingly reveals to Redmond that he has a preoccupation; that he is haunted by something. Wallace then begins to tell Redmond that he suffers from a memory of a memory of beauty and happiness that fills him with longing and makes his everyday life look vain and dull.
Here, Redmond introduces the central conflict between ambition and contentment which plagues Wallace throughout his life. Wallace is unable to focus on his political career and devote energy and attention to it because he is preoccupied by the memory of perfect happiness. He cannot balance the two—the memory of happiness, now lost to him, blocks him not only from performing as expected in his career and everyday life but from even seeing any value in those things.
Themes
Once Wallace mentions his distraction, Redmond realizes that he can see it visibly in Wallace’s face. He also recalls that a woman who had once loved Wallace had mentioned that distraction as well: how he seems to forget you and suddenly lose interest.
Redmond reveals that Wallace’s preoccupation with his memory of happiness—what might be described as a “lost golden past”—invades all corners of his life. It impacts not only his career, but also his personal relationships. Wallace’s longing defines him to such a degree that it is visible in his behavior and on his face.
Themes
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When Wallace does maintain his interest, however, he is extremely successful in his career—far more successful than Redmond. He similarly surpassed Redmond—who wasn’t a bad student himself—when they were in school together at St. Athelstan’s College. Redmond also remembers that it was at school that he first heard a mention of the door in the wall, which Wallace then told him about that night during dinner.
Redmond’s narration reveals that—despite Wallace’s as-yet-unexplained preoccupation—Wallace has the capacity for incredible ambition and material success. In this way, Wallace becomes a kind of “battleground” for two opposing forces: the allure of success and importance in the everyday world on the one hand, and the desire for profound happiness and spiritual fulfillment on the other. That Redmond recalls the door in the wall being associated with Wallace all the way back in his school days makes clear that this tension in Wallace has long existed, and also serves to heighten the general mystery in the story about just what the door in the wall is.,
Themes
Redmond now relates Wallace’s story. Wallace was a precocious and practical child. His mother died when he was two, and his father was stern and distant but expected great things of him. One day, when he is about five and wandering the streets of London, He notices a green door set in a white wall. Certain it will be unlocked, he feels a strong compulsion to open it. Yet, at the same time, it is clear in his mind that if were to go through the door it would make his father angry if he did. He walks past the door and goes to the shops down the street, where he looks through their wares. But then he turns in a burst of emotion and runs through the door before he can change his mind.
Wallace, as Redmond did in the story’s introduction, emphasizes Wallace’s loneliness, practicality, and early success. These various traits continue to play with the tension around the reality of the door in the wall. Is it a real thing that the young Wallace encounters, or is it a hallucination of a lonely boy looking for contentment and connection that he can’t get at home with his mother dead and his father strict and distant? Even as a young child, he senses the tension between the spiritual fulfillment offered on the other side of the door and material success. In this case, he knows somehow that the door is open to him: the path to a carefree, golden childhood. Still, his fearful adherence to his father’s priorities—ambition and self-control—lead him to initially pass the door by. It is the strong, uncontrollable emotions of childhood, contrasted with his father’s rules and his own practicality, which then sends him through the door.
Themes
Wallace finds himself in a garden. The garden’s air was intoxicating, and breathing it gave a feeling of lightness and goodness. Everything in it was beautiful, and it filled him the sort of profound joy one can only feel “when one is young and … can be glad in this world.” The garden is enchanted. He sees two panthers and feels no fear as one of them rubs softly against him. Flowers and hills and blue skies stretch into the distance, with London nowhere to be seen. He forgets the “discipline and obedience of home” as well as doubt and fear and the “intimate realities of this life.”
The adult Wallace, who is telling this story about his life, emphasizes the feeling of the garden and how it is emblematic of perfect happiness and the golden, indescribable quality of childhood. As the young Wallace is still a child himself, he has few responsibilities to leave behind in his entry into the garden. The garden is a peaceful haven, untouched by reality; London disappears, as do Wallace’s worries. In the garden, surrounded by magic and beauty, Wallace is unable to even think about a different world, let alone one as different from the garden as his father’s house with its rules and discipline.
Themes
Then a tall, beautiful girl comes up to Wallace, and, smiling, takes him by the hand. He has a deep feeling of everything being right and full of a happiness that had somehow been missed before. The girl spoke to him of pleasant things, though he couldn’t ever remember what she had said.
Wallace’s descriptions of the garden continue to portray it as a perfect place of innocent love and beauty, but they also indicate a certain dreamlike quality in their lack of detail. For the first time, the adult Wallace admits that his memory of the garden is less than perfect, indicating to the reader and to Redmond that they should perhaps question whether Wallace is remember something real or imagined.
Themes
Eventually, the girl leads Wallace to some playmates his own age, which is meaningful to him because he is a very lonely boy. With these friends he played wonderful, collaborative games, though the adult Wallace comments to Redmond that he could never remember what games they played. Later, when he was alone in his nursery, he wanted to play the games again, but could only cry as he did he could not remember them.
Wallace’s time in the garden is characterized by collaboration and unconditional kindness; the games involve no winning, no “success,” which would be incompatible with the garden’s perfect joy. Once again, the adult Wallace admits both his imperfect memory of the garden through his inability to remember the games he played in it. That inability—resulting from the fact that he is alone in his nursery and can’t actually remember the games, implies that the perfect happiness of the garden cannot exist outside. The reference to the young Wallace back alone in his nursery also foreshadows the fact that his time in the garden will come to an end, and that he will regret it.
Themes
After some time playing with his new playmates, a grave woman with dark hair and a pale face appears and leads him away. Wallace’s two playmates are upset to see him go and halt their game to beg him to come back soon. The woman takes Wallace to a room where she shows him a book about his life. It contains pictures of realities from his past: his mother, his father, his nursery, and, finally, it shows a picture of Wallace himself standing in the street outside the door in the wall, just about to enter. Wallace wants to see more of the book, but the grave woman initially resists doing so. When he insists, she kisses his forehead and turns the page. Wallace sees the lonely street in London: not a picture in the book, but his actual harsh reality.
Wallace’s departure from the game very briefly interrupts the perfect happiness of the garden, indicating to him his importance to his playmates and the real connection he has made with them. The picture book blurs the line between reality and fantasy; in this magical fantasy world of the garden, the picture book shows reality. The book, besides Wallace himself, is the only time the real world invades the magical world of the garden. Also note that the book explicitly shows the passing of time, and that it is when Wallace shows interest in his own future hat he is kicked out of the garden. The implication is that the garden is incompatible with progress, with change, and therefore with someone who is interested in what will happen next to him. Wallace’s interest in his future is an expression of interest in whether he will be successful in the material world, and that interest is incompatible with staying in the garden.
Themes
The garden is gone, as is the grave woman whom Wallace had been with a moment before. He cannot return to the playmates who had called out to him to return. He begins to cry, frightened, distraught, and ashamed of weeping publicly at his age. An old gentleman sees him crying in the street and, assuming that he is lost, finds a policeman to take him home.
Wallace’s return to the London street is a shocking transition for him and a shocking tonal change for the reader, thrust from the bright loveliness of the garden to the harsh emptiness of the real world. Wallace’s return to reality is the moment in which the garden becomes for him the lost golden past, beautiful and inaccessible. For the first time, Wallace understands the inadequacy of his world, knowledge which will haunt him for the rest of his life. This is, as well, the first time Wallace tells Redmond about his shame, an emotion which will influence his actions in life almost as much as his ambition.
Themes
Wallace interrupts his story to say that he has tried to describe the garden — which haunts him still — to Redmond as clearly as he is able. But he admits that he can convey nothing of the indescribable sense of the garden: the strange dream-like quality, the unreality, and the difference from common experience. Still, he says, he has given a true account of what happened to him. And if it really was a dream, it was both extraordinary and during the day.
Wallace attempts to convey both the reality and unreality of the garden to Redmond: an impossible task. The garden’s unreality and its indescribable peacefulness are both what make it desirable to Wallace and what make it impossible for him to convey accurately to Redmond. It seems important to Wallace that Redmond believe him, but even he can’t dismiss the possibility that the entire experience might have been a dream. Given that, Wallace makes clear that it is more important for Redmond to understand that the garden, real or imagined, has had a concrete and lasting impact on Wallace’s life. Though he characterizes the garden as a place of goodness and light, Wallace considers the lingering effects of its memory in a more negative light: it “haunts” him.
Themes
After returning home, the young Wallace is questioned by his father, his nurse, and his aunt. He attempts to tell them about the garden, but his father does not believe him, and gives him his first thrashing for telling lies. His aunt punishes him for his persistence. Everyone in the house is forbidden from listening to Wallace’s stories. His father is “old-school” and, concluding that Wallace is too imaginative, takes away his fairy-tale books.
After Wallace’s interactions with others in the garden, full of kindness, this meeting with his father is jarring. It emphasizes a disconnect between the strangers in the garden who cared for Wallace and his own family who mistrust and coldly discipline him. Now that the garden is lost to Wallace, so is the rest of his childhood: he is forced by his father to put away his childish things and with it much of his joy and the expression of his vibrant inner life. The loss of the garden is tied to a loss of freedom, imagination, and childhood. And his father sees anything but discipline as antithetical to the success he craves for his son.
Themes
At night, the young Wallace cries into his pillow and prays to God to make him dream of the garden. He thought so intensely about the garden that, he now admits to Redmond, he might have changed or added to some of his memories of the garden. The adult Wallace comments to Redmond that everything he has described is an effort to reconstruct fragmentary memories of a very young boy.
Now that Wallace has experienced unconditional love and perfect happiness, the real world is not only lacking, but painful to live in. Once again, though, Wallace indicates that his memory of the garden is imperfect, contributing to the tension between reality and fantasies, and drawing the reader back to Redmond’s initial question of the reality of the garden.
Themes
Under Redmond’s questioning, Wallace then says that as a young boy he didn’t seek to find the door again, probably because he was not permitted to wander as he had previously. He believes there was even a time when he forgot the garden altogether, and notes that he didn’t attempt to reach the garden again until he was at school, when Redmond already knew him. He then asks if, when Redmond knew him as a kid, whether he showed any signs of “having a secret dream.”
For Wallace, the loss of the garden means restriction: restriction of movement, restriction of imagination, and restriction into the specific career-focused young adulthood his father demands of him. Wallace’s forgetfulness about the garden, however, indicates that he was able, as he is also in later life, to focus on and live successfully in the everyday world. While as an adult he accomplishes this focus through his own interest and willpower, as a child it is enforced upon him by his father and household. He is not permitted to search for the garden or interact with it at all except in the privacy of his own mind. In asking Redmond about whether he showed signs of “having a secret dream,” Wallace seems to be seeking confirmation to himself about his relationship to the garden as a schoolboy and whether that tension between the real world and the garden, between success and contentment, were evident in him. It also implies that, now as an adult, Wallace knows that he does show negative signs of having a “secret dream,” which Redmond himself has already noted is visible in Wallace’s face.
Themes
