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 adult Wallace, staring into the fire, pauses a moment. Then he carries on with his story, telling Redmond that he didn’t see the door in the wall again until he was seventeen. It appears to him for the third time as he is smoking a cigarette and driving to Paddington Station on his way to Oxford University to receive a scholarship. Wallace remarks to Redmond that at that time he must have thought himself quite “a man of the world.”
The door in the wall appears to Wallace for the third time as he is—once again—on his way to an obligation, this one significantly more important than the last when he was just rushing to get to school on time. Wallace is entering the adult world and pursuing an education that will lead him to an impressive career. Oxford is one of the premier universities in England, and a launchpad of success. Wallace wishes to be “a man of the world”—his ambition to make a mark on the world drives him. As such, he must necessarily engage in that world—the real world of education and jobs, and not the peaceful world of the garden.
Themes
Wallace catches just a glimpse of the door as he leans out of the cab to smoke. It appears suddenly, and with it comes the sense of precious and still attainable things. Wallace is too stunned to stop the cab until it had already turned a corner and the door is out of sight. He experiences a strange moment where his purpose is divided between continuing on to Oxford and returning to the door.
Spotting the door, Wallace is torn, drawn both by the opportunities of the real world and the reattainment of the blissful memories of the golden past of the garden. He feels that, if he makes the step into the door, the golden past is not quite lost to him yet. To do so, however, he would need to go backwards: physically backwards, since his cab has already passed the door, and metaphorically backwards, to return to his more innocent past.
Themes
Wallace taps the roof of the cab and checks his watch. The driver asks, “yes sir!” Wallace, unable to speak clearly, decides to continue on to Oxford. He says “nothing,” and tells the driver to keep on, since there isn’t much time. The driver goes on.
This time as Wallace makes his choice to not go through the door, he understands that the door will not always be there. His choice is not just to leave the door for later; he is choosing Oxford definitively over the door. Note that Wallace attempts to reconcile his two desires for ambition and peace by checking the time. Wallace recognizes that there is a choice to be made: he can go on to Oxford or he can stop for the door, but he lacks time to do both. Wallace is interested in the future, in making his appointment on time, and in looking ahead to his scholarship and his future career. The garden, incompatible with ambition and change, is incompatible also with someone so invested in the future and the possibility of success.
Themes
Wallace gets his scholarship. The night after he learns he got the scholarship, he sits in his little study in his father’s house and smokes a cigar. He can still hear his father’s rare praise in his ears. He remembers the door in the wall and thinks to himself: if he’d stopped to enter it, he would have missed his scholarship and Oxford and the impressive career before him. He reasons that he has made the right choice and correctly arranged his priorities. At the time, the adult Wallace comments to Redmond, he doesn’t doubt that his future career is something that merits sacrifice.
Wallace has made his choice: he would rather be a man of the world than a child in the blissful magic garden. Here, Wallace displays his full understanding that the choice of the real-world means giving up the garden entirely, and vice versa—he knows that he couldn’t have had it both ways, and that if he had chosen the garden, he would have entirely missed this opportunity to begin his career. His success in winning his scholarship proves to him that he has made the correct decision: that ambition is worth more than peace, and that he has made the correct sacrifice. Even if he can only find perfect contentment in the garden, he can find meaning and value in the real world through success, impacting the world, and earning the praise of his father. Yet the adult Wallace’s interjection makes clear that the younger Wallace’s ideas only work if it is in fact true that a career merits sacrifice, and the implication from the older Wallace’s comment is that he has come to think otherwise.
Themes
Get the entire The Door in the Wall LitChart as a printable PDF.
The friends and atmosphere of the garden are dear to Wallace but seem remote. He sees new opportunities in the real world, and a new door opening: that of his career.
With the material success of the world so close to Wallace in the form of his scholarship and his bright future career, the happiness of the garden seems distant. The real world and the garden continue to exist in an inverse relationship. The garden is an idyllic memory, but one that does not harmonize with the bright urgency of Wallace’s real world.
Themes
The adult Wallace pauses again to stare into the fire. In the light reflected on Wallace’s face, Redmond sees a flicker of stubborn strength before it disappears again. Wallace muses to Redmond that he has served his career and done much hard work, but he has still dreamt of the garden a thousand times and glimpsed the door four more times.
The adult Wallace reveals to Redmond that, while he has made great accomplishments and had the career he so longed for when he gave up the door for his scholarship, his desire for the garden has never left him entirely. That Wallace is there to tell Redmond that he has seen the door four more times suggests that each of those times he has always chosen the real world over actually going through the door, but the way that Wallace stares into the dire and the way his strength “disappears” while speaking to Redmond suggests that he is no longer happy with those choices to put his career above the garden’s peace and contentment.
Themes
Wallace notes that, for a while in his youth, the world was so bright and interesting and full of meaning that the garden seemed soft and remote by comparison. Who, he asks, wants to pet panthers while on the way to dinner with attractive and important people? He finished college and returned to London a man of immense promise, and he believes he has done something to achieve that promise, and yet he has also experienced disappointments.
As a young man with his career on the rise Wallace is caught up in the values of that career. He has little attention to spare for the garden, and characterizes the garden as childish and less exciting than the opportunities available to a young working professional. Wallace is consumed by ambition, and, as he reveals, he accomplished much, but, as his reference to disappointments reveals, neither his ambition nor success protect him from discontentment.
Themes
Wallace tells Redmond that he has been in love twice. Once, while on the way to meet one of those women, he takes a shortcut through an unfrequented street and happens upon the door in the wall. He finds it odd that the door is there, since he’d thought it was in Campden Hill. But he passes it by, intent on reaching his date, who, he knew, doubted whether he would actually show up. The older Wallace remarks to Redmond that the door had no appeal to him that afternoon.
Once again, the pressing obligations of Wallace’s real life keep him from even considering entering the door in the wall. He has obligations and desires which tether him to his life and prevent him from feeling more than vague curiosity about the door. Wallace is unable to both invest himself fully in the real world and desire the garden as wholeheartedly as he did when he was a child; at this point in his life, the real world occupies him too fully.
Themes
Then, though, Wallace notes that he did have an impulse to open the door. He is certain, as before, that it would open for him. But he thinks that to enter the door might delay him on his way to this meeting which was also a test of his honor. Afterward, he tells Redmond, he regretted his focus on punctuality and thought that he might have at least looked into the garden and waved to the panthers. By then, however, he knew that he would not find the door again by going to actively look for it, and he was sorry to have missed it.
Every time Wallace encounters the door, he has the sense that it will open to him; in this way, he always feels that his lost golden past is still reclaimable. If he gives up his material attachments, he can return to it. Yet, his dedication to punctuality—related to his ambition and his investment in his real life—prevents him from even stopping to glimpse the garden. After the urgency of the meeting is gone and punctuality is maintained, however, the allure of the lost golden past returns for Wallace. It is in the headlong rush of the moment that Wallace’s real-world life now holds his attention. In quieter moments, he has now begun to prefer the idea of the garden to the fruits of his career.
Themes
Wallace explains to Redmond that years of hard work passed before he saw the door again, and that it is only recently that it has appeared to him. With its reappearance, Wallace has experienced a sort of “tarnish” covering the world around him. He begins to think it would be a bitter thing to never see the door again. Wallace is not sure why he feels this way. He thinks it might be overwork, or perhaps it is a result of soon turning forty years old. Regardless, Wallace explains that the “keen brightness” that makes hard work easy now eludes him just when he most needs to devote himself to work during new political developments.
With the return of the door to Wallace’s life comes the reminder of the peace and contentment of the garden—contentment lacking in his career-driven life. The reminder of the garden makes Wallace’s life duller in comparison, particularly now that the immediacy and brightness of his early career has passed. As Wallace has grown into middle age and actually had success, the implication is that the actual experience of success is not as sweet as it seemed like it would be when he was younger. Though there is still the excitement of new political developments in his career, his attention—which he can only devote fully to either his life or the garden—turns inexorably to the garden. The sight of the door in the wall is now the only thing that fills Wallace’s life with meaning—yet this means that the door now leeches meaning from every other part of Wallace’s life.
Themes
Wallace reveals that he now finds life toilsome and its rewards cheap. He longs for the garden. He tells Redmond that he’s seen “it” three times. Redmond, shocked, asks if he means the garden. Wallace clarifies that he means the door. He’s seen it three times, but hasn’t gone in. Wallace leans over the table towards Redmond and tells him with immense sorrow that, though he swore to himself that if he ever saw the door again he would escape the vanity and futility of his present life, he instead saw the door three times in the last year and each time he didn’t go inside.
Wallace is torn by his two opposing desires for material success and contentment. The possibility of perfect happiness in the garden, theoretically within his reach, haunts his real life, which tires and dissatisfies him. Still, he cannot bring himself to take the final step through the door and relinquish that life for the garden. At this point in the story, Wallace understands going through the door in the wall to mean a complete and permanent life change; if he goes to the garden, he doesn’t plan to return. To choose to step through the door is to leave behind his life for good, along with all his ambition and success. The fact that he yearns to go through the door and seems to hate his material life, but still doesn’t go through the door suggests that he is, in a sense, addicted to success and the material life.
Themes
The first time Wallace sees the door again is on the night of an important vote, during which the Government won by a majority of three. No one on Wallace’s side of the vote expects the debate to end so quickly. Wallace is dining with a fellow politician, Hotchkiss, and his cousin when they are called in for the vote. While rushing to the vote in a motorcar, they pass the door in the wall. It is distorted in the lamplight, but unmistakable. Wallace cries out, “My God!” Hotchkiss asks him “what?” but Wallace tells him it is nothing, and they carry on. When he arrives, Wallace tells a fellow politician that he has made a great sacrifice to be there. Still, he doesn’t see how he could have done anything other than what he did that night.
The door only appears to Wallace when he has a pressing obligation, forcing him to choose one option—his career or the garden—and give the other up entirely. He cannot commit partially to the garden. Once again, Wallace sees his political career as something worthy of sacrifice. But this time, unlike when he passed the door by for Oxford, he sees it as a painful sacrifice. It’s noteworthy that Wallace again calls the door “nothing,” as he did on the way to Oxford, rather than explain his outburst. Wallace does not allow the door in the wall to have a real and identifiable presence in his political life, especially after his failure to convince either his father or his schoolmates of its reality.
Themes
The next time Wallace sees the door is as he is rushing to his father’s deathbed. Wallace remarks to Redmond that then, like the first time, the “claims of life” were more important than the door. The third time Wallace sees the door, however, was different. It happened a week before Wallace’s dinner with Redmond. Wallace was walking with two men named Gurker and Ralphs one evening, discussing the possibility of Wallace taking an important position in the Ministry. Wallace says that he might as well tell Redmond about the conversation—it isn’t a secret; though Redmond also shouldn’t tell people about it—and thanks Redmond for his congratulations on the position.
This time, the door appears to Wallace during a personal obligation rather than a career event that affects his material success. Still, Wallace’s father, who demanded his focus and discipline, is emblematic of all Wallace’s drive and career ambition. To stop for the door in the wall rather than be at his father’s deathbed is to not only abandon his father but also to reject all his father’s values of work and achievement. At this point, Wallace reveals that he has achieved incredible success in his career—an important government position at a young age. His repeated rejection of the door and the garden has led him to the success his father wanted for him and the material rewards of his hard work.
Themes
Wallace’s position is a delicate one during the conversation. He plans to keep his conversation light until Ralphs leaves, at which point he might become suddenly frank with Gurker. As they walk, Wallace notices the door in the wall ahead of them down the road. They walk right past it as they talk.
At this, the most important moment of Wallace’s career, the door in the wall appears, offering him the usual choice: to stop and go through, or to move forward in his life.
Themes
Wallace, passing within twenty inches of the door, wonders what might happen if he excuses himself, says goodnight, and enters the garden. Nervous and giddy about his conversation with Gurker, he imagines his companions would think him mad. He pictures the headlines from the next morning: ‘Amazing disappearance of prominent politician!’ That weighs on his decision, as do a thousand petty considerations.
Wallace cannot let go of the real world enough to approach the door. He does not consider what awaits him beyond it, but what he would be leaving behind should he go through it. Once again, Wallace’s shame also motivates him as much as his ambition does. He worries about what others would think if he disappeared into the door. He recognizes these concerns about maintaining his reputation as being petty, yet they still influence his decision to leave the door behind.
Themes
Wallace interrupts his story to turn to Redmond and say, “Here I am!” He says that he has rejected the door to peace and happiness, though it offered itself to him three times, and he believes that chance is now gone. When Redmond asks how he knows the door is gone, Wallace claims that he simply knows. All he has now is the career he built for himself.
At this point, the time of his conversation with Redmond, Wallace understands the golden past of the garden to now be completely lost to him. He has been given opportunities for perfect peace and he has rejected them—for what he now considers to be vain, frivolous reasons—in favor of the real world. Wallace understands his own choices, his preoccupation with success and his fear of embarrassment, to be antithetical to the rewards of the garden. Just as he used to “know” the door would open for him, he now understands it to be forever closed. Because of his behavior, he believes that the garden, loving and collaborative, no longer considers him worthy—or perhaps capable—of entry.
Themes
Wallace knows others see him as having success, but he calls it a vulgar, irksome thing. He shows Redmond a walnut, tells him “if that was my success…” and crushes it in his fist. He confides that the loss of the garden is crushing him. He reveals that he has done no work but what is extremely urgent. He, a Cabinet Minister, is filled with regret and he wanders at night, alone, grieving for the door and the garden.
Once, Wallace understood the door in the wall as an obstacle to his pursuit of success and accomplishment. Now, however, he understands the pursuit of success as an obstacle to what really matters to him: a return to the peace of the garden. All his success, which he sacrificed so much to achieve, he now sees as being completely worthless—he would destroy it and make the opposite choice, if he could. Yet, he was given three recent opportunities to choose the garden, and it is only when he believes the choice has been taken from him that he understands his true priorities. Wallace is left with regret, so all-consuming that he cannot focus on his real life and the pressing obligations of his impressive new position. He cannot live both in the garden and his real life; he is likewise unable to live in his grief for the garden and still devote himself meaningfully to his career. He made the choice to remain in his real life, yet the garden still draws him away from it. In this way, he has lost his connection to his real life without gaining the rewards of the garden.
Themes
