![]() The conflict between science and imagination is the major theme of the story, which was enormously popular when it first appeared. The fact that Wallace dies in an accident while trying, finally, to get back to that world highlights how unhappy he was, and how – whether real or imagined – that brief time in the enchanted garden was perhaps the only time in his life when he was truly happy. Wells’s short story The Door in the Wall was first published in 1911 as part of a collection titled The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories. Either way, he finds it impossible to get back there, because his father has pushed him to make a success of his life and has no time for indulging such ideas. In the last analysis, ‘The Door in the Wall’ is a tragic story about a lonely boy who either finds solace in his own (powerful) imagination, or who actually discovers a portal to another world. ![]() Instead, Wallace is so caught up in his political career, in being a public figure in the ‘real world’, that he doesn’t even have time to stop and try the handle. ![]() Each book is devoted to the work of a single author. ![]() Taken as a whole, the collected authors and stories are a rich sample of the storyteller’s art. Wells could have made it so that Wallace did stop at the doors he spotted as an adult, but was unable to access the dream world again when he stepped through them but this would have risked destroying the ambiguity over whether that first encounter was genuine. The many stories in this series cover a broad terrain of themes, and all the stories are enjoyable as they are instructive. ![]()
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