The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells (Herbert George Wells, 1866-1946) was a great English novelist who considered himself more of a journalist than a poet. He is arguably one of the fathers of science fiction, two of his most well-known science fiction works being The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.

Wells grew up in poverty and with little education, yet had an intellectual curiosity from a young age. He worked as a science teacher and even published a biology textbook.

After The Time Machine brought him success, he started producing original science fiction works that have become treasured classics over the years.

If you’re interested in how Wells fits into the timeline of the development of science fiction, here’s an interesting article by BBC.

What the Door in the Wall Leads to

In Wells’ intriguing short story, The Door in the Wall (1906), the narrator’s old school friend tells him a fantastical tale about a door in the wall that leads to an idyllic garden. In the garden, all the people were nice to each other. There is a sense of childhood innocence and freedom, where the narrator’s friend says he played games and got a lovely girlfriend.

The narrator listens with rapt attention to his friend on his deathbed. The friend tells him that everyone thought he imagined the garden, and he was punished for making up stories.

Can He Ever Visit the Garden Again?

Yet, the narrator’s friend knows he did not make it up because he rediscovered the garden while walking to school one day. He sees a “long white wall and the green door that led to the enchanted garden!”

Then, he told a boy at school about it, and the other boys bullied him. He looked for the garden after that, but couldn’t find it for the rest of his schoolboy days. He guesses this is because he told others about it.

Then, the boy became a late teenager and adult and saw the door many more times. He saw the door when he was seventeen, driving to get a college scholarship. He got the scholarship, but in the process chose to ignore the door.

Trapped by Doing One’s Duty

Over and again, the narrator’s friend chooses to do his duty over visiting the garden. Now, as a dying man, he sees what his choices have cost him. He speaks with regret:

“I am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that held me so strongly when my moments came. You say, I have success–this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have it.” He had a walnut in his big hand. “If that was my success,” he said, and crushed it, and held it out for me to see.

The Door in the Wall

The man now sees his earthly success, as measured by society’s standards, as meaningless. It has not brought him joy, and he can’t take it with him when he dies.

The man meets his end, and the narrator is left to ponder the meaning of his friend’s fascination with the door:

You may think me superstitious if you will, and foolish; but, indeed, I am more than half convinced that he had in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something–I know not what–that in the guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful world. 

The Door in the Wall

The Moral Implications

There’s a subtle moral in this story: Don’t miss out on the joys and pleasures of the garden because you are so busy acting society’s role for you. I am sure that Wells meant that we should give way to our impulses and pleasures more, but as a Christian, the garden represents Eden, the paradise lost by sin, to me.

If we get caught up in living by society’s standards, we start living for material and perishable things, like wealth or a good reputation, and can forget the one thing that will not perish: our soul. I read this as a, “don’t forget the finer, more important things of life” kind of tale, and to me, those finer things are spiritual realities.

Wells was not a Christian, and therefore most likely did not intend this meaning of his story. But hey- he stuck an idyllic garden in there, knowing that it would bring Eden to mind. What Eden is, I think, is where we would begin to disagree.

Overall, I like Wells’ ideas and am looking forward to reading The Time Machine and other interesting stories of his.

What about you? Do you have any classic early science fiction books or works by Wells that you recommend?

Story from: https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/tditw.html

Author biography from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/H-G-Wells