The Wall

“At the time everyone was talking about nuclear wars and their consequences, and this led Hugo to keep a little store of food and other important things in his hunting lodge.”

The disaster that ends the world in The Wall is one that catches the world off-guard, as everyone outside the wall is frozen in the middle of their everyday routine. This reference to the preoccupation some characters have for nuclear war connects the catastrophe of the wall with Cold War fears. Haushofer wrote this novel at the height of the Cold War, and the fear that mutually assured destruction could happen at any time is replicated in the disaster of the novel.

“Baffled, and I stretched out my hand and touched something smooth and cool: a smooth, cool resistance where there could be nothing but air. I tentatively tried again, and once more my hand rested on something like a windowpane.”

This is one of the only descriptions of the wall that separates the protagonist from the rest of the world. It is essentially an invisible wall that allows her to see outside unobstructed, almost as if the wall were made of air. The wall’s appearance foreshadows how the protagonist never finds an answer to what the wall is or why it is there. There is nothing notable about the wall that gives a reason for why she is safe, and the rest of the world is not.

“The spring would often frighten me. From a certain distance its splashing sounded like a conversation between two sleepy human voices.”

Haushofer uses figurative language frequently in the novel, most specifically to bring the nature surrounding the protagonist to life and to reflect her anxieties and emotions. In this excerpt, the protagonist describes the sound of the spring with a simile, comparing it to the sound of “two sleepy human voices.” The image this evokes is one of a haunting, as though two ghosts were just out of sight. This description amplifies the protagonist’s isolation and offers a glimpse into what worries her: other people.

“Shivering in bed I considered what was to be done. I could kill myself, or try and dig my way under the wall, which would probably only have been a more strenuous kind of suicide. Or of course I could stay here and try to stay alive.”

The protagonist debates at several times throughout the novel whether she should try to survive within the wall, escape the wall by digging under it, or to give up completely. These three options demonstrate the instability in her life at the beginning of her time within the wall. She does not yet benefit from Liberation Through Isolation and is unsure of how to operate in her new world now that the old one is gone. She does not know what kind of life is ahead of her, but chooses to explore it.

“She had very quickly become more to me than simply a piece of beef that I kept for my own use. Perhaps that idea was nonsensical; but I couldn’t and wouldn’t resist it. The animals were all I had now, and I began to feel like the head of our curious family.”

For the vast majority of the novel, the protagonist is the only human character. Other characters include various animals that slowly become members of the protagonist’s family. She cares for them and as time goes on, visualizes herself as the leader of this family. With this comes responsibilities for the animals that keep the protagonist from giving up. In this new world, she chooses to interact and coexist with these animals differently.

“She clearly didn’t expect any nasty surprises from him anymore, and started to treat him as a moody wife treats her oaf of a husband.”

As the protagonist adopts the animals around her into this little family, she begins formulating their personalities, giving them human qualities to make their presence more real. In this excerpt, she notices how the cat initially interacts with Lynx. She describes their relationship as one resembling an unhappy wife and messy husband. Haushofer this simile to create a picture of the dog and cat’s relationship that is familiar to readers, advancing their characterization through the use of figurative language.

“I saw two birds lying in the tall grass […] They looked pretty, like painted toys. Their eyes shone like polished stones, and the colors of their plumage hadn’t faded. They didn’t look dead, but rather like things that had never been alive, entirely inorganic. And yet they had once lived, and their warm breath had moved their little throats.”

When the protagonist looks outside of the wall, she observes a world frozen. Though nature continues to thrive, all living creatures are dead and still. When she notices birds in the grass, she describes them with language that makes them appear unreal, almost like statues. She compares their eyes to polished stones and notes that their feathers maintain their color. These descriptive words amplify the protagonist’s conclusion that they look as though they are not real and never were.

“I ordered Lynx to keep an eye on Pearl, and when we were at home he didn’t let her out of his sight. The old cat, finally worn out by the strenuous duties of motherhood, was happy that Lynx assumed the role of Pearl’s protector.”

Lynx is the closest being within the wall that the protagonist has as a friend. He is loyal, listens to her, and is very sensitive to her emotions. He demonstrates his devotion to the protagonist in this instance by looking after Pearl when she asks him to. His commitment to the kitten also further solidifies the family dynamic between the protagonist and these animals, as Lynx acts like a babysitter while the cat relaxes, overwhelmed by mothering.

“I am still scrawny, but muscular, and my face is crisscrossed with tiny wrinkles. I’m not ugly, but neither am I attractive, more like a tree than a person, a tough brown branch that needs its whole strength to survive.”

The longer that the protagonist stays within the wall, the more connected to nature and the weight of survival she becomes. She notices changes to her body, reflecting her increase in labor. However, she also notes the development of her close relationship with nature by comparing her new appearance to that of a tree. This simile demonstrates how the protagonist’s understanding of the world around her shifts in isolation, and she begins to see herself less and less as the woman who was once molded by others.

“The heat hung beneath the spruce trees and beeches as if trapped under a big green bell jar.”

Haushofer’s use of similes when she describes nature help create an atmosphere of claustrophobia and anxiety that connect to the protagonist’s isolation within the wall. In this excerpt, the protagonist describes the heat as being trapped under a bell jar. Not only does this image evoke the same image of her trapped within the wall, but also highlights how the heat, being trapped, becomes an additional layer of oppression for the protagonist.

“I thought about the nights of bombing raids spent in the cellar, and old fears set my teeth chattering. The air too was as thick and bad as it had been back in the cellar.”

As the protagonist listens to a thunderstorm, she remembers her days during the war as a civilian, in which she had to hide from bombing raids. The thunder elicits these memories and the trauma accompanying them, reminding the protagonist of the crisis she faces. Though there is no threat of bombs in the forest, the thunderstorm that rages reminds the protagonist of Nature as a Dominant Force and the destruction it can do.

“There’s something about caves that’s at once very attractive and disturbing. When I was still young and still took death as a personal insult, I often imagined withdrawing to a cave to die, never to be found. This idea still holds a certain charm for me; it’s like a game you’ve played as a child, which you still like to think about from time to time.”

The protagonist’s preoccupation with caves demonstrates a connection to her predicament inside the wall. She once believed that when she was ready to die, she would go to a cave, therefore isolating herself. Though she does not come to the lodge in the forest to die, becoming trapped behind the wall isolates her as though she were in a cave, and with no real means to escape.

“The dampness of the gorge lay like a wet cloth on my face.”

Once again, figurative language is used in The Wall to link nature to the isolation of the protagonist within the wall. In this excerpt, instead of heat, the protagonist describes dampness and humidity as being constrictive. She uses a simile to compare the damp to a wet cloth on her face. Not only does this evoke an image of a heavy wet cloth, preventing someone from seeing, but also the experience of struggling to breathe through a wet cloth. The wet cloth acts as a barrier between the face and everything else, much like how the wall keeps the protagonist separate from the rest of the world.

“In the future, a snowy forest will mean nothing but a snowy forest, and a crib in the stable nothing but a crib in the stable.”

As the protagonist meditates more and more on nature as a dominant force, she comes to realize how impermanent the legacies of humanity will be without humans to preserve them. Not only does nature destroy the physical legacy of civilization, but over time, the meaning that humans ascribed to different scenes will also disappear. When the protagonist thinks of Christmas, she realizes she does by calling up the imagery of the holiday. With no one to celebrate, however, these symbols will lose all meaning, erasing the holiday forever.

“I was never very strong, just stubborn and resilient. I gradually worked out all the things I could do with my hands. Hands are wonderful tools. Sometimes I imagined that Lynx, if he had suddenly grown hands, would soon have started thinking and talking as well.”

With each passing season, the protagonist does increasingly difficult labor to ensure that she and her family of animals will survive. She begins to put more value into her hands and their capabilities than before, and sees them as the key to her success. She equates them to tools and even believes that if Lynx had hands, he could be like her. Hands therefore become a symbol of her resilience and agency, a physical manifestation of the choices she makes and the impact she has on her surroundings.

“The wall forced me to make an entirely new life, but the things that really moved me are still the same as before: birth, death, the seasons, growth and decay. The wall is a thing that is neither dead nor alive, it really doesn’t concern me, and that’s why I don’t dream about it.”

Though the protagonist leads a new life and begins to reconsider who she is, she realizes that many of her motivations within the wall are the same as those from before the wall’s arrival. She focuses on the cycle of life, the passing of time, and nature. She is beholden to these within the wall, though in different ways than she was in her previous life. Now, births and deaths are more painful and consequential, and the seasons do not merely represent time passing but real threats to her and her animals.

“While I was absently stroking her flank I suddenly knew that I couldn’t leave. Perhaps it was stupid of me, but that’s just how it was. I couldn’t flee and let my animals down. This decision wasn’t the result of any thought or emotion. There was something planted deep within me that made it impossible for me to abandon something that had been entrusted to me.”

The protagonist becomes the protector of the animals around her and feels an immense responsibility for them. She describes this sense of duty as something almost innate to her as a person. In many ways, she steps into the role of mother once again with these animals, protecting and providing for them. The large difference between these relationships and her relationships with her daughters is that she does not fear the animals becoming strangers like her daughters once did.

“Like all human beings, I too was forever in hurried flight; forever trapped in daydreams. Because I hadn’t seen the deaths of my children, I imagined them as being still alive.”

The protagonist struggles with fully accepting that the outside world is gone primarily because of the lack of drama and calamity. In The Wall, the end of the world is peaceful and essentially goes unnoticed. In fact, the protagonist never truly knows at what precise time it happened. However, because of this, she does not have firm confirmation of what happened to the people she loved. Though she knows that her daughters are dead, the lack of seeing them makes it hard for her not to imagine that they could still be alive.

“Even today I can’t say how things will develop; but if I dig my way under the wall I will perform that last task very thoroughly and build a proper gateway of earth and stones. I couldn’t deny my deer their last chance of survival.”

When the protagonist thinks of escaping by going underneath the wall, she plans to leave an opening for other living creatures. She struggles with the act of killing, uncomfortable inserting herself within the natural order. She wants to provide the deer with a means of escape as well because she does not believe it is her place to decide their future. It is this same reasoning that prevents her from taking revenge against the fox she believes may have killed Pearl.

“After all we’ve been through together, Bella has become more than my cow, a poor patient sister who bears her lot with more dignity than I do.”

Though the protagonist views some of the animals around her, like Pearl and Tiger, almost as her own children, she sees the cat and Bella as peers. Both the cat and Bella are mothers and, like the protagonist, face many challenges in that role. Over time, the protagonist comes to see Bella like a sister, and finds comfort knowing that the two of them face challenges together. She also sees a major difference between herself and Bella, realizing that her humanity makes it more difficult to face the future than it is for Bella to do the same.

“Since Lynx died I feel that clearly. I sit at the table and time stands still. I can’t see it, smell it or hear it, but it surrounds me on all sides. Its silence and motionlessness is terrible. I jump up, run out of the house and try to escape it. I do something, things race ahead and I forget time. And then, quite suddenly, it surrounds me again.”

As the protagonist writes her account, she mentions the deaths of Lynx and Bull. Their deaths have a profoundly different impact on her than those of Pearl and Tiger because Lynx and Bull were murdered by another person, outside of the natural hierarchy. She struggles to make sense of Lynx’s death and often feels as though she loses her grasp of time. This terrifies her, giving her nothing to anchor herself with. It is a more severe form of isolation that goes beyond liberation to confinement.

“I shall have to get used to it, its indifference and omnipresence. It extends into infinity like an enormous spider’s web. Billions of tiny cocoons hang woven into its threads, a lizard lying in the sun, a burning house, a dying soldier, everything dead and everything living. Time is big, yet it has room for new cocoons. A gray and relentless net, in which every second of my life is captured. Perhaps that’s why it seems so terrible to me, because it stores everything up and never really allows anything to end.”

The protagonist considers the flow of time by comparing it to a spider’s web. Time captures every moment of her life and holds onto it, in the same way that a spider’s nest traps insects. Like an insect trapped in a spider’s web, the protagonist is scared. She struggles to accept the immensity of time and the way in which she cannot escape it, having to move from one day to the next, overcoming tragedies in order to eventually face more.

“I waited for the familiar onslaught of anxiety and despair, but it didn’t come. I felt as though I’d spent fifty years in the forest, and the towers were now nothing to me but constructions of stone and tiles. They didn’t affect me at all anymore.”

Toward the end of her account, the protagonist becomes aware of the immense change in her identity as she finally cuts ties with the old world and embraces her new life, finding liberation through isolation. She realizes this in part from her reaction to the remnants of society outside the wall. She feels more at home in nature now than ever before, and while the site of crumbling buildings once filled her with trepidation, she no longer feels anything toward them.