The Door

by E.B. White

Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Horror

5 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 13, 2010

About the author

Elwyn 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.”

Reviews

[Adina ( catching up..very slowly) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in Black Water anthology together with the Short Story Club.

I did not like this story. Yeah, it has a message about how the narrator does not like the constant change of society and success rules, which might lead to mental illness or something. He uses an analogy of a rat in a cage. Very strange and convoluted.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else. Maybe it was the city, being in the city, that made him feel how queer everything was and that it was something else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the names of the things. The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid… 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.”

So this opens. My initial thoughts were “WFT” and “I'll have what he [White] is having”. Things don’t get any clearer, but it was enticingly bemusing.

“All his life he had been confronted by situations which were incapable of being solved, and there was a deliberateness behind all this, behind this changing of the card (or door), because they would always wait until you had learned to jump at the certain card (or door… and then they would change it on you.”

It’s at least one metaphor and maybe a more literal story too. There are many interpretations, and neither I, nor the rest of the Short Story Club, could settle on any particular one, which is why this is so interesting, and I am going to say no more. See the link below to read the story and make up your own mind.


Image: Graphic of two rats, each in a perspex box. One has a green card on it and the other a red one. (Source)

See also

• I knew White from reading Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web in childhood. Anthropomorphic creatures may be a common theme, but the children’s books have a clear situation and narrative, which is not the case in this story.

• This reminded me of another book I loved in childhood, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which was probably my first foray into speculative/fantastical fiction

• The YA classic, Flowers for Algernon, which I reviewed HERE.

I’m not sure Mrs Frisby or Flowers are much like this story, as I’m still not sure what this story is about, but lab rats and the rat race seem to feature - and the term “rat race” is first documented around the time this was written.

• White also co-wrote and the prescriptivists’ bible, The Elements of Style. It’s not well-known in the UK, but I enjoyed Geoff Pullum’s pugnacious critique, 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.

Short story club

I read this in Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 24 March 2025.

You can read this story HERE, with very minor differences compared with the one printed in the anthology..

You can join the group here.

[Connie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Door" was written in 1939 at a time the world was undergoing changes as the Great Depression was ending and World War II was starting. The narrator in this work feels very frustrated by a world that is constantly changes its rules.

He uses a metaphor of lab rats in a psychology experiment that learn to jump at a square card (or a door) with a circle in the middle in order to get food. But then the researchers change the rules, and the rats feel totally frustrated that their learned behavior no longer works.

The narrator said that prayers and religion were taught to be the right door when he was young. Then love and marriage were the correct door. A beautiful home was later considered the right door. The narrator is confused as the doors for success continue to change. He's disturbed as society's rules keep changing in the rat race of life to the point of having mental health issues. It's an interesting, but very strange, story.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange little story about the Pavlovian nature of life.

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I need to read this again, but do I want to? When you open up this story, nothing is what it seems to be, there is no knowing what is to be known, and the unknown is lurking beyond every portal.

Frustrated rats give up. Is that what has happened to all of us?

A challenging, surreal short story, and I don't know what to make of it, if there is anything to be made, or if all conclusions are dust.

[James Duško]

Probably 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.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wha that some good shi

[Ketutar Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

oouuh... Asperger's experience of the world with neuronormals... brrr...

[martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

written on the edge of madness , the city is an inhospitable place when the system contrives to drive you to insanity . 1939 New York . Frantic

[Leah Markum · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Rishabh Jha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't understand anything.


Probably the most confusing short story you'll ever read.

[مهرا · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly don't know how I ended up liking it considering it was so vague.

[Kristin Eoff · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[James Garber · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Danny · Rating 5 out of 5]

closer to understanding myself but also not really but sort of

[Ria · Rating 1 out of 5]

this was just confusing

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do we live in a world where the rules keep changing? the road to insanity.

[Keso Gagoshidze · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Debi Cates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my! I love this story. I love the disorientation, the discomfort of it for the reader. Wait, that doesn't sound right.

What I mean is that this story hits a nerve. The whole piece sounds crazy, like a mere crazy person's rambling. But the more you read, the more you come to grasp the narrator's way of speech, his metaphors, his fragments, and you sense the psychological pain he is in and what it is founded upon. He is in anguish that glittering modern metropolitan life has been one big bait and switch for him (for everyone). He has lost the "rat race."

This story--a surprise from E.B. White--prompted yet another lively discussion in The Short Story Club group. You can join the group here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

[Larrry G · Rating 3 out of 5]

For what it's worth, it would take someone far moire cleverer than I, perhaps of Aldous' perception, or then again, perhaps one most obtuse, to truly prorate this rat tale a 1 or a 5 star, so there it be. For my part, I'm stuck with the mouse's tail-rhyme, being more concrete. The preamble for that helpfully includes "I know what ‘it’ means well enough, when I find a thing,” said the Duck: “it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is . . ." The question is here who is the questioner and what the heck are they questing for, and so forth.

[Blanca]

E.B. White me sigue sorprendiendo para bien. Al principio no entendía de qué iba este relato, me estaba dejando muy confundida. Pero conforme ha ido avanzando me he ido sintiendo más y más absorbida por el mismo, por ese estilo caótico y envolvente, por una narración que simula el pensamiento humano real, que puede ser impredecible y acelerado. Poco a poco las asociaciones que ha ido presentando White, en apariencia incoherentes, me han ido pareciendo más acertadas, haciendo de este relato un buen ejemplo de una mente convulsa y angustiada.

[Jared Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[teo • · Rating 3 out of 5]

liked the writing, what was it about though? no idea

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certifiably gohon (multichromatic); an ingenious rat maze fizzling with spices.

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read for GR short story group

https://www.classicshorts.com/stories...

[Valowlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.)

[Hoda Marmar · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.