48 pages • 1-hour read
Every Heart A Doorway
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Doors and Keys
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death and graphic violence.
Doors and keys function as motifs of the theme of The Search for Belonging. As a result, the novella’s title, Every Heart a Doorway, expresses that the characters’ longing for connection and acceptance is central to the narrative. Throughout the story, the portal worlds’ entrances are called doors. Most of the students feel trapped on Earth, forced to wait for these entrances to reappear. Thus, for characters like Loriel, the search for belonging takes the form of a literal search for a magical door: “Sometimes Loriel couldn’t keep her eyes closed long enough to fall asleep, and then she had a tendency to roam the grounds, looking for her missing door” (102). In Chapter 6, the concept of “the duality of the doors” explores how doors are a source of both great joy and deep pain for the children. When the doors first open for the students, they invite them to “a place that underst[ands] [them] so well that it ha[s] reached across realities to find [them]” (105), but the students are left endlessly searching to recapture that sense of belonging when the doors shut them out of their portal worlds.
McGuire uses the motifs of keys and doors to set the novella’s antagonist apart from the protagonist and her allies. Jill sacrifices others to make a skeleton key that will allow her to return home, whereas Jack possesses a metaphorical key to the Moors all along but chooses to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her sister. Jack uses “the bloody scissors” with which she kills Jill to open a portal to the Moors (164), indicating that Jill must be transformed through her death and eventual resurrection before the sisters can return to their true home and reclaim their sense of belonging with one another. The novella’s resolution offers a new insight into the motif of doors. The “solid oak” entrance to the Halls of the Dead appears when Nancy realizes her power of self-determination (168). This suggests that people can actively create belonging and foster positive change in their lives rather than waiting for someone else to decide that they deserve this.
Nancy’s Suitcase
Nancy’s suitcase serves as a motif of The Tension Between Familial Expectations and Individual Needs. The author highlights this thematic link by making the case clash with Nancy’s solemn personality: “Her small wheeled suitcase was bright pink, covered with cartoon daisies. She had not, in all likelihood, purchased it herself” (16). The literal luggage helps to convey the emotional baggage that Nancy’s parents burden her with. The case contains a note in which her mother writes, “We want our real daughter back” (27), revealing that her parents want her to conform to their old idea of her and refuse to accept that she has changed. The “welter of brightly colored clothes” that accompanies the note also betrays the parents’ lack of understanding for their daughter (167); conforming externally by wearing the clothing they chose would do nothing to change her inner reality and would only bring her pain.
During the Epilogue, Sumi’s note transforms the suitcase from a damaging example of familial expectations into a source of self-determination. Sumi frees Nancy to prioritize her own needs by telling her that she’s “nobody’s rainbow” (167). This empowers Nancy to open her door to the way back home, leaving behind her biological family and their damaging expectations. The suitcase brings the novella full circle by charting the protagonist’s growth toward embracing her needs regardless of familial pressures.
Pomegranates
Pomegranates symbolize home to Nancy. A “grove of pomegranates trees […] heavy with fruit” stands at the entrance of the Halls of the Dead (22), and Nancy drank “silver cups of pomegranate juice” during her time there (34). The fruit alludes to Greek mythology, revealing that the Halls of the Dead are the Greek Underworld, that the Lady of Shadows is Persephone, and that Hades is the Lord of the Dead. Just as the six pomegranate seeds that Persephone eats ensure her return to the Underworld, Nancy’s hair ribbon, which is “the color of pomegranate seeds” (16), expresses her desire to return to the Halls of the Dead. In Chapter 7, Jack gives Nancy a symbolic taste of home in the form of a mug of hot chocolate made with pomegranate molasses. This is the closest Nancy comes to eating the fruit while she’s on Earth, although it’s in a processed form. The cocoa scene shows how Nancy’s friends offer her solace and understanding as they cope with their shared homesickness. At the end of the novella, Nancy picks and eats a pomegranate that tastes “like heaven.” This full and direct experience contrasts with earlier moments in the novella when all she had was a trace of the fruit’s color or a hint of its flavor, emphasizing that Nancy is home at last. The symbolic fruit situates the Halls of the Dead within world literature, conveys Nancy’s longing for home, and adds to the satisfaction and joy of the novella’s resolution.
Unlock the meaning behind every key symbol & motif
See how recurring imagery, objects, and ideas shape the narrative.
- Explore how the author builds meaning through symbolism
- Understand what symbols & motifs represent in the text
- Connect recurring ideas to themes, characters, and events