Doors Without Numbers: A Wallace Hammond Novel

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ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics. East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. The story suggests both the magic and the danger of a nostalgia for a buried time. It is a story about politician Wallace who, while growing up in a joyless home, discovers a door in a wall leading to an enchanted garden. Wells has often been seen as being caught on an intellectual battleground between his scientific training in rational thought and his gift of a vivid imagination. Wells was a scientific visionary and social prophet. One of the most widely read British writers of his generation, he explored the new territory of science fiction and crusaded for a new social order in more than forty-four novels and social and historical books.

He sought to escape poverty by receiving an education at London University and the Royal College of Science, where he studied zoology. One of his professors, the noted biologist T. Huxley, instilled in Wells the belief in social and biological evolution that Wells later cited as the single most influential aspect of his education.

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After graduating, Wells wrote a biology textbook and began submitting fiction to various magazines, determined to fulfill his dream of being an author. His childhood fascination with science, coupled with his science education, found expression in The Time Machine, the first of several enormously popular novels of scientific mythmaking, which was followed by The Island of Dr.

In his personal life, he sought the ideal woman, one who would combine passion and intellect, and this led to a stormy ten-year love affair with the young English author Rebecca West. Their union resulted in a son, Anthony West, who grew up to become a distinguished writer himself.

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Throughout the s he took center stage in warning that humankind was on the brink of disaster, while zealously planning the reconstruction of society. Wells died in at the age of eighty. Long ago as a lonely child of five he had wandered out of his home into the streets of West Kensington in London, where he noticed a green door set in a white wall. It was very attractive to him, and he wanted to open it, but at the same time he felt that his father would be very angry if he did.

Nevertheless, the young Wallace gives in to the temptation and finds himself in an enchanted garden. There are various animals, including two tame panthers, beautiful flowers, and shady trees. A woman begins to read a book to the boy, and soon it becomes apparent that the story she is telling is that of his own life. When the book reaches the point in his life at which Wallace finds himself outside the green door, the enchanted world vanishes, and the boy finds himself once more on the dismal West Kensington street in London.

Wallace tells his father about the garden—and is punished for telling what his father assumes is a lie. In time, and as a result of this punishment, Wallace succeeds in suppressing the memory.

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But he can never quite forget it completely and often dreams of revisiting the garden. Throughout his life he unexpectedly comes upon the door in the wall in different parts of London, but each time he is rushing to an important commitment of one sort or another and does not stop to open it. Wallace tells his friend Redmond that three times in the past year he has seen the door, and on each occasion he has passed it by: One morning a few months later, Wallace is found dead, having apparently mistaken a door at a dangerous construction sight for the elusive door in the wall.

Wallace tells Redmond the story of the door in the wall. His cautious nature is shown by his trepidation upon encountering the door, because he knows his father will be angry if he opens it. A child of a strict, Victorian upbringing, Wallace has been conditioned to deny his imagination and put all his effort into becoming successful. Nevertheless, the young Wallace gives in to the temptation—not yet having mastered self-control—and opens the door in the wall, and finds himself in an enchanted garden filled with beautiful flowers, tamed panthers, and friendly children.

When Wallace tells his father about the garden, his father punishes him for lying, causing Wallace to suppress the memory of the garden. Throughout his life, Wallace sees a similar door a few times, but he is too driven by his ambition for worldly success to stop and open it.

Now, at age 39 and very successful, Wallace regrets passing up the garden and vows to stop the next time he sees the door. This regret illustrates his desire to give in to imagination and to break free from his rational life. The treatment Wallace received as a child forced him to retreat into a private world of imagination. The only place where he could find love and attention was through the door in the wall. Wallace was forced as a child to repress his imagination: When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked persistence.

These feelings persist throughout his life and make it difficult for him to connect with other people. Redmond fits the preconceived notion of a sane person in that he seems to have a normal, healthy mind, makes sound, rational judgments, and shows good sense. Wallace seems just as sane at first; he does not fit the stereotype of an insane person because he holds a prestigious job and seems successful.

As a child, Wallace is forced to suppress his imagination, and he carries this into adulthood. He has been made to think that imagination is a terrible thing.

Therefore, Wallace begins to view his childhood experience not as imaginary but as real, and this is the only way Wallace can accept this part of himself. In a Freudian interpretation, he no longer has the ability to differentiate between real and imaginary, since the imaginary is off limits to him.

In the end, it may seem that Wallace has gone insane—mistaking a door at a railway construction site for the magical door in the wall—but he is merely trying to return to that brief time in the garden when he was allowed to be himself. In his public life, Wallace is an extremely successful Cabinet Minister in the British government.

He is trusted and respected. Redmond, the narrator, holds Wallace in the highest esteem. It is not until Redmond is alone that he begins to question the tale. In private, Wallace is not so competent; he longs for the enchanted garden, that special place behind the wall that he has never known in his public life. His father has raised him to be rational and dull, cold and interested only in his career. Wells himself was both a scientist and a writer of fiction; similarly, Wallace possesses a vivid imagination but goes into politics, where he is considered extremely rational.

Doors Without Numbers: A Wallace Hammond Novel

Wells has often been considered a participant in the debate between the virtues of science and the necessity of imagination. A symbol is something that is used to represent or refer to something else. That came into the impression somehow.

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They were blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must have been new fallen. The amber sunshine and red creeper masculine, virile, dominant is juxtaposed with the whiteness of the wall moon, feminine. The green door symbolizes fertility; it is the color associated with the Roman and Greek goddesses of love, Venus and Aphrodite. The door itself is a common literary symbol that represents the passageway between the conscious and the unconscious. Psychologists who study dreams note that leaves are a symbol of happiness. In his everyday life, these things were frowned upon.

Fantasy literature is intended to leave the reader in a state of uncertainty as to whether events are due to natural or supernatural forces. His friend Redmond is not so sure. Fantasy literature usually begins in an unremarkable, everyday setting. Readers are slowly pulled into the fantastic story. By gradually easing them into it, readers are more apt to believe the fantasy. Wells is regarded as one of the most prominent champions of the early twentieth-century spirit of British liberal optimism—the belief that scientific advances have made life almost perfect and that there is nothing left to discover.

Huxley, who instilled in the young scientist the belief in social as well as biological evolution that Wells later cited as the single most influential aspect of his education. Victoria had ruled Great Britain since , and her reign was known for its conservative outlook on sex, politics, and the arts. Great strides in art and science were taking place at the turn of the century. As inventions such as the automobile, the airplane, and motion pictures began to transform everyday life, the unsettling pace of progress began to affect the arts, which questioned the wisdom of such unbridled growth.

Wells, who was both an artist and a scientist, however, was excited by both imagination and technology. At the same time, new ideas about art were gaining popularity.

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Wells was influenced by these as well. For example, he read Creative Evolution , a book by French philosopher Henri Bergson that stressed the importance of change through a creative life force, in opposition to a scientific view of nature. This view stresses intuition as superior to scientific or intellectual perception. Wells was also interested in the visual arts; he saw that the traditional forms and concepts of art were starting to break down dramatically after as a variety of alternative aesthetic principles, particularly Cubism, began to develop.

The first decade of the twentieth century saw enormous changes, and Wells reacted to much of it in his writing. What more can I say? This book is gripping, It is exciting, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, other times thrilling. The plot is held together perfectly. I hope there is a second book to follow as I am counting my pennies for the next one!

Aug 24, Earl rated it it was amazing. This is the first book I'd read in a long time. It grasped me from the outset and I couldn't put it down thereafter. The twists and turns of the plot kept me guessing throughout right up to the last pages. At times I felt part of the Wallace Hammond investigations and his team, despite the challenges he and they all faced.

Doors Without Numbers: A Wallace Hammond Novel by C.D. Neill

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