The Door in the Wall is a story about Lionel Wallace, the narrator’s friend who was shearching for a door he found in his childhood. The door that had led him into enchanted garden of wonderful things and people. The narrator himself says that he doesn’t know whether Lionel himself was the possesor of an inestimable privilege or the victim of a fantastic dream. Even in the end, Redmond is not very much convinced in the reality of his story. One of his believes was that Wallace was no more than a victim of the coincidence between a rare but not unprecendented type of hallucination and a careless trap. But Wallace was absolutely convinced in the existence of the Door. To him the Door in the Wall was a real door leading through a real wall to immortal realities. I believe it was his way of escaping from his unhappy childhood. His mother died when he was two and was under the care of a nursery governess. His father gave him little atention and was a stern, pre-occupied lawyer. I presume that because of the lack of attention and affection which he recieved at an early age he strated seeing the green door. I would say that the Door symbolises his allienation, loneliness and misfortune.
He created for himself a whole new world where everything was as he wanted to be and where he had everything he needed. ” I forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to the discipline and obedience of home, I forgot all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion, forgot all the intimate realities of this life. I became in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy little boy – in another world. It was a world with a different quality, a warmer, more penetrating and mellower light, with a faint clear gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its sky. After, tall, fair girl lifted me and kissed me, there was no amazement, but only an impression of delightful rightness of being reminded of happy things that had in some strange way been overlooked.” From these lines we can see that he was very unhappy at his home, where he feared perhaps his father who wanted so much from him but gave so little in return. You can feel the coldness of an English house where a young little boy had to hide and refrain his feelings and be disciplined and discrete.
He was desperately seeking for love and understanding which he hadn’t received at his house. Doubtless, in my opinion, the tall, fair girl represents his mother who provides him his long seekings like love, attention and security. In this part he sees everything that he miss, what he thought that he should have had. Just a few moments spent in the wonderful garden intensified him the flaws of a real life. After this event, when he returned home to reality, in attempt to retell what happened to him, he was punished. Because of that from the early days his imagination had been repressed. ” Even my fairy-tale books were taken away from me for a time- because I was to ‘ imaginative’. I believe his father wasn’t going to allow his son, for who he had greater plans for, to wonder off in a such a world like that. Everyone was forbidden to listen to his stories about it. In the garden, he mentioned two great panthers. They could also be conected to his mother because panthers are animals who nurture like mothers and combine strenght, protection and existence.
To conclude, I believe Wallace was just a lost, lonely little boy throughout all of his life and that he never recovered from the love lacking and cold home he lived in. He didn’t get affection when he was a child and that feeling of rejection followed him all his life. Even when he grew up and became Prime Minister he had feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction despite his prestige, great achievments and fame. He always felt like something was missing and has never stopped dreaming of unattainable enchanted garden. He never forgott about the Door who appeared to him few more times in life after childhood but he never went in again. He would always find some excuses not to go in. He desired it so much but never entered when he had the opportunity. Although he praised the garden, perhaps he was afraid what he would find if he entered. Maybe it wouldn’t be as good as he remembered it, maybe he would be dissapointed or would even realize that they were not real. Nobody actually knows. It seems he could only truly be happy in his own fictional world. ” If it’s a dream, I am sure it was a day-time and all together extraordinary dream.”
