The Lumber Room

by

Saki

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The Lumber Room Symbol Analysis

The Lumber Room Symbol Icon

In the story, the lumber room symbolizes wildness and imagination, and the aunt’s decision to bar the children from this room represents her affinity for propriety and orderliness. In upper-class English homes, the lumber room was used to store extra furniture and unused knickknacks. This seemingly uninteresting room is described as a place of great mystery and wonder in the story. The aunt does not allow the children inside, and even refuses to answer their questions about it. Nicholas is very curious about this forbidden place and concocts an elaborate plan to enter it. When he succeeds in doing so, he is struck by the contrast between the “wonderful things for the eye to feast on” that he finds there and the aunt’s “bare and cheerless” house. He is particularly fascinated by a tapestry that depicts a hunting scene and he also admires other unusual objects he finds, like a candlestick shaped like twining snakes, a teapot shaped like a duck, and a book containing pictures of exotic birds.

Interestingly, all these objects have some association with animals or birds, suggesting that the lumber room is a place of wildness as opposed to the decorum of the rest of the house. Also, Nicholas interacts with these objects by imagining them into life. The tapestry is “a living, breathing story” to him, and he “assign[s] a life-history” to a mandarin duck he finds in the bird book. In the lumber room, Nicholas is free to make the imaginative leaps that his minds yearns for, away from the aunt’s prescriptions of behavior and thought. The adults keep children away from this room because they don’t want them to be freethinkers. In the story, the other children don’t attempt to attain this freedom of thought, but Nicholas, with his wit and bravery, tries and succeeds. He seems to be touched by the special wild, captivating quality of the lumber room even after he leaves it. When the family is at tea at the end of the story and is sitting together in stony silence, lost in their own personal miseries, Nicholas is quiet like the rest but floats above their discomfort, thinking about the story of the tapestry.

The Lumber Room Quotes in The Lumber Room

The The Lumber Room quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Lumber Room. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Adults, Children, and Power Theme Icon
).
The Lumber Room Quotes

Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. […] [I]t was a storehouse of unimagined treasures.

Related Characters: Nicholas, The Aunt
Related Symbols: The Lumber Room
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 273274
Explanation and Analysis:

But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instant attention; there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in comparison!

Related Characters: Nicholas, The Aunt
Related Symbols: The Lumber Room
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:

“Nicholas, Nicholas!” she screamed, “you are to come out of this at once. It’s no use trying to hide there; I can see you all the time.”

It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled in that lumber-room.

Related Characters: The Aunt (speaker), Nicholas
Related Symbols: The Lumber Room
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:

As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.

Related Characters: Nicholas, The Aunt, Girl-Cousin, Nicholas’s Brother, Boy-Cousin
Related Symbols: The Lumber Room, The Tapestry
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Lumber Room LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Lumber Room PDF

The Lumber Room Symbol Timeline in The Lumber Room

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Lumber Room appears in The Lumber Room. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Lumber Room
Adults, Children, and Power Theme Icon
Imagination Theme Icon
The World of Conventions vs. the Natural World Theme Icon
...a plan of action that ha[s] long germinated in his brain,” which is to enter the lumber room . After retrieving the key from a high shelf in the library, Nicholas slides it... (full context)
Adults, Children, and Power Theme Icon
Morality and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
The World of Conventions vs. the Natural World Theme Icon
...of the gooseberry garden, claiming that she can see him. Nicholas, who is still inside the lumber room , smiles to himself when he hears her say this. It is “probably the first... (full context)
Adults, Children, and Power Theme Icon
Imagination Theme Icon
Morality and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
...aunt scream and then call out for someone to help her. He carefully locks up the lumber room and replaces the key in the library, and then goes out to the front garden... (full context)
Adults, Children, and Power Theme Icon
Imagination Theme Icon
Morality and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
The World of Conventions vs. the Natural World Theme Icon
...like the others, as well. He is thinking deeply about the tapestry he’d found in the lumber room , and thinks that the hunter might be able to escape with his dogs if... (full context)