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The Door
Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else.
5 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 13, 2010
113 people want to read
About the author
E.B. White
97 books3,078 followersElwyn Brooks White was a leading American essayist, author, humorist, poet and literary stylist and author of such beloved children's classics as Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. He graduated from Cornell University in 1921 and, five or six years later, joined the staff of The New Yorker magazine. He authored over seventeen books of prose and poetry and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1973.
White always said that he found writing difficult and bad for one's disposition.
Mr. White has won countless awards, including the 1971 National Medal for Literature and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, which commended him for making “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.”
White always said that he found writing difficult and bad for one's disposition.
Mr. White has won countless awards, including the 1971 National Medal for Literature and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, which commended him for making “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.”
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 22, 2020
Strange little story about the Pavlovian nature of life.
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August 17, 2016Probably one of the most confusing things I've ever read: after finishing it, I still couldn't tell what it was about, if someone asked me.
I liked it, though.
I liked it, though.
August 24, 2022
Wha that some good shi
November 21, 2019
oouuh... Asperger's experience of the world with neuronormals... brrr...
December 6, 2021
A very short story that could probably be the subject of long essays of criticism and analysis. Reading through the various GR member reviews here, it's clear that there are many different views on what it is actually all about. This is about as far from Charlotte's Web as you could get. A cry for help during a bout of depression or perhaps an expression of loathing for the pressure and manipulation of a routine nine to five corporate existence?
For me, it recalled the painful experience of a job I hated, working for people whom I did not respect or trust, implementing policies and procedures I did not believe in and which yielded nothing of benefit except in feeding egos that delighted in tormenting their colleagues
Read it. Let me know what it means to and for you
For me, it recalled the painful experience of a job I hated, working for people whom I did not respect or trust, implementing policies and procedures I did not believe in and which yielded nothing of benefit except in feeding egos that delighted in tormenting their colleagues
Read it. Let me know what it means to and for you
May 6, 2021
This the probably the most a short story has managed to say in so few words.
I've seen is explained many different ways and all of them prompt interesting discussion, which for me is the mark of superb fiction.
I've seen is explained many different ways and all of them prompt interesting discussion, which for me is the mark of superb fiction.
December 14, 2020
I honestly don't know how I ended up liking it considering it was so vague.
October 23, 2017
Like many short stories, this one is confusing. But since it's so short, a little goofy, and leaves enough hints to piece together possible meanings, it was amusing. Am I reading about a rat or a human? Is the maze and its doors real or metaphorical? I've read some dystopian classics recently, so I also wonder if maybe this story is set in a future and humans really do participate in laboratory "rat" scenarios. If so, why?
I then read the other reviews about this story and I was inclined to read it again. Indeed, now I can see how it's a metaphor for life choices--religion, romance, the dream house in the country--make one hopeful enough to "jump" at doors that, turns out, were never to open. Only the author doesn't make this out to be life itself simply not working about because not everything does, he attributes these doors to open at the will of the "Professor". After all, he trains people to jump at doors that open until he deems it time to not open the door when the jump. Then people are disheartened. The doors stop opening. People stop believing in possibilities and become easily manipulated. Rats.
That's a lot to get out of 2000 words, a good chunk of which were red herring nonsense like, "The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid or they were duroid sand or flexsan duro, but everything was glass but not quite glass and the thing that you touched the surface, washable, crease-resistant was rubber, only it wasn't quite rubber and you didn't quite touch it but almost." I have no idea what that and other's like it are supposed to mean.
I then read the other reviews about this story and I was inclined to read it again. Indeed, now I can see how it's a metaphor for life choices--religion, romance, the dream house in the country--make one hopeful enough to "jump" at doors that, turns out, were never to open. Only the author doesn't make this out to be life itself simply not working about because not everything does, he attributes these doors to open at the will of the "Professor". After all, he trains people to jump at doors that open until he deems it time to not open the door when the jump. Then people are disheartened. The doors stop opening. People stop believing in possibilities and become easily manipulated. Rats.
That's a lot to get out of 2000 words, a good chunk of which were red herring nonsense like, "The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid or they were duroid sand or flexsan duro, but everything was glass but not quite glass and the thing that you touched the surface, washable, crease-resistant was rubber, only it wasn't quite rubber and you didn't quite touch it but almost." I have no idea what that and other's like it are supposed to mean.
October 4, 2019
I first read this short piece probably of his when I was in college. A brilliant early view of technology and science from 1939. In fact, considering when it was written it was seriously ahead of its time. I wonder if he was moved to write it after visiting the '39 World's Fair in New Y0rk where there was quite a number of exhibits of what the future would look like.
June 10, 2019
It’s the kind of writing that I like in hindsight and theoretically, but is not quite ... present in the present. Like... a nuanced umami flavor of literature. I like it. I think I like it a lot. I’ll have to have a second helping to be sure though.
August 14, 2020
Didn't understand anything.
Probably the most confusing short story you'll ever read.
Probably the most confusing short story you'll ever read.
November 7, 2020
closer to understanding myself but also not really but sort of
January 26, 2023
How do we live in a world where the rules keep changing? the road to insanity.
December 27, 2023
Written in the era of the great unsettlement, a man gets used to the "winds of change", struggles to find the door within himself, to walk out, as it feels deeply disturbing to the feeling of his own security; and when he does open the door, the ground came up to meet his foot.
They call this embracing the freedom from certainty.
"But it is inevitable that they will keep changing the doors on you," he said, "because that is what they are for; and the thing is to get used to it and not let it unsettle the mind. But that would mean not jumping. Among rats, perhaps, but among people never. Everybody has to keep jumping at a foot because that is the way everybody is, specially some people."
This book acknowledges the social, political and philosophical shift in mindsets that had happened after the great wars. It's still going through, but with larger scales.
They call this embracing the freedom from certainty.
"But it is inevitable that they will keep changing the doors on you," he said, "because that is what they are for; and the thing is to get used to it and not let it unsettle the mind. But that would mean not jumping. Among rats, perhaps, but among people never. Everybody has to keep jumping at a foot because that is the way everybody is, specially some people."
This book acknowledges the social, political and philosophical shift in mindsets that had happened after the great wars. It's still going through, but with larger scales.
May 17, 2019
This is a very strange and confusing short story. I think it's supposed to be allegorical about the futility of trying to be in charge of your life when actually you are running through modern existence like a test rat in a cage and reacting to the stimuli created by others who are actually in control.
November 6, 2019
An interesting thought experiment; I suspect there is much more to it than I have picked up on this first read-through. I get the sense that there is a profound and forlorn fatalism regarding not only technology but human desire as well. But I feel that White knows better than that so I also get the sense that it is a critique of something. Alas, until the re-reading.
August 26, 2021
this was just confusing
October 23, 2023
liked the writing, what was it about though? no idea
March 2, 2024
Certifiably gohon (multichromatic); an ingenious rat maze fizzling with spices.
December 28, 2019
Or would you prefer to show me further through this so strange house, or you could take my name and send it to me, for although my heart has followed all my days something I cannot name, I am tired of the jumping and I do not know which way to go, Madam, and I am not even sure that I am not tired beyond the endurance of man rat, if you will and have taken leave of sanity.
Oh, I do so love abstract stories. They are not nonsensical so much that their depth can only be truly reached by the creator himself. I find familiarity in them, like the trains of thoughts that I am at times gripped to release from my own cranium. I get restless, distracted, hazy—until the time I can finally reach a writing instrument and burble out the trapped words—trapped and knocking.
And then, almost without warning, he would be jumping at the same old door and it wouldn't give: they had changed it on him, making life no longer supportable under the elms in the elm shade, under the maples in the maple shade.
The purpose of this story is not for you to fully understand it. Or, there is no purpose to this story at all. I guess, it's up to you. For me, at least, I got out of it a feeling. A... camaraderie, of sorts. It's comforting to know that well-established and well-loved writers can go off on tangents and make absolutely no sense (or too much sense, just hidden), too. There was a sadness. There was a longing. There was a sense of resigned hopelessness.
I liked it.
You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell you, would you, about my friend the poet deceased who said, "My heart has followed all my days something I cannot name"? It had the circle on it. And like many poets, although few so beloved, he is gone.
(Read it here.)
April 3, 2014
This very short novella is an extremely rich work of literature!
It is a dazing trip inside the maze of confusion, frustration, despair, and alienation in the narrator's mind. He is describing how the filthy urban life has poisoned his psyche. (Spoilers ahead!)
He draws the comparison between modern man, and an experimental laboratory rat! Humans, in this technological world, like rats, are drawn to behave in controlled ways as to suffer to get their needs like a rat getting an electric shock and still knocking on the door to food.
The doors to religion, science, and love have failed the narrator. h would like to go back to nature, while knowing that they will change that door as well.
THEY stands for the Professor in control, and for the all-knowing superior Madame. I felt they are metaphors for God and the mother figure, respectively.
It is a dazing trip inside the maze of confusion, frustration, despair, and alienation in the narrator's mind. He is describing how the filthy urban life has poisoned his psyche. (Spoilers ahead!)
He draws the comparison between modern man, and an experimental laboratory rat! Humans, in this technological world, like rats, are drawn to behave in controlled ways as to suffer to get their needs like a rat getting an electric shock and still knocking on the door to food.
The doors to religion, science, and love have failed the narrator. h would like to go back to nature, while knowing that they will change that door as well.
THEY stands for the Professor in control, and for the all-knowing superior Madame. I felt they are metaphors for God and the mother figure, respectively.
December 22, 2014
If you like a good high concept and symbolism, this one's for you. I kind of prefer an entertaining ride to go along with it, though...
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December 31, 2014*short story*
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews