54 pages • 1-hour read
The Wall
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Themes
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of animal cruelty and death and graphic violence.
Liberation Through Isolation
As the protagonist’s time in the mountains lengthens, her isolation and the drastic changes to her everyday life force her to confront her past. As she does so, she comes to realize how free she now is, unburdened by others and their expectations of her. Thus, through the protagonist’s experiences alone in nature, she discovers liberation through isolation.
With no society left to dictate who she is and what she should do, the protagonist gains a clearer understanding of who she is: “If I think today of the woman I once was […] I feel little sympathy for her. But I shouldn’t like to judge her too harshly. After all, she never had the chance of consciously shaping her life” (66). Alone in the mountains, the protagonist has the freedom to dictate what every day ahead looks like, leading a life based on necessity and survival. She feels as though she did not direct her own life before, instead burdened by the responsibilities and expectations of gender roles.
The primary source of this constriction, in her mind, was the role of motherhood: “When she was young she unwittingly assumed a heavy burden by starting a family, and from then on she was always hemmed in by an intimidating amount of duties and worries” (66). Before her alpine isolation, the expectations and anxieties of marriage and motherhood defined who she was and what she did. Though the wall confines her to a small area, the isolation it provides frees her to finally explore who she wants to be.
The revelation that her imprisonment within the wall’s boundaries is actually a personal freedom is one that drives the protagonist forward. She must decide what she does and how she lives, rather than depending on others to define the terms of her life for her. She begins to realize this the more she connects with nature, taking the time to see the world around her in a new light. As the protagonist reflects more and more on her situation and surroundings, she comes to realize that she is acting authentically for the first time: “I realized that everything I had thought and done until then, or almost everything, had been nothing but a poor imitation. I had copied the thoughts and actions of other people. The hours on the bench by the house were real to me, an experience of my own” (175).
The protagonist realizes in the absence of others that she is the product of others, having modelled her life around the roles she was expected to play. With no one left to mimic, every action the protagonist takes, and every thought she has, is original to her. She is unrestrained, free to exist away from what society expects of her. This liberation brings the protagonist a sense of contentment and happiness despite the struggles of her new existence.
The Weight of Survival
For the protagonist, survival within the confines of the wall depends on physical safety and the exercise of reason. As the dystopic situation becomes more apparent, the protagonist takes measures to ensure that she is safe from various threats. As she adjusts to her surroundings and new lifestyle, the protagonist must contend with the weight of survival.
Despite her apparent isolation, her efforts to protect herself most commonly revolve around the imagined threat of other people, which speaks to how the greatest threat to survival often comes from humans, not nature: “[A]ll the measures I was taking were directed against human beings […] The only enemy I had ever encountered in my life so far had been man” (16-17, emphasis added). In the protagonist’s life, people are the most unpredictable and dangerous, with immense capacities for violence and cruelty. Her preoccupation with safeguarding her new home from others demonstrates how survival is always on her mind, even if she is seemingly alone. Her sudden encounter with another survivor—a violent man—justifies such fears. The man’s killing of the protagonist’s animals represents human society’s violent, domineering attitude toward the natural world, in which survival is conceived of in terms of power and oppression. The protagonist embraces a rival ethos, one in which survival is rooted in cooperation with, and respect for, the natural world and other forms of life.
The protagonist’s vulnerability proves to be more than merely physical, as she at time struggles to find a reason to persevere. She becomes attached to her animals, the only other presences in her life, but must watch as they die around her, most often from natural causes. Although she tries to keep herself from becoming attached to save herself from future pain, she discovers that she cannot. Her love for her animal companions proves paradoxical, as she hopes to one day live without them, though they motivate her to move forward: “I often look forward to a time when there won’t be anything left to grow attached to. I’m tired of everything being taken away from me. Yet there’s no escape, for as long as there’s something for me to love in the first, I shall love it” (133).
It is nevertheless these emotional attachments that give the protagonist a reason to keep going in her isolation. At various moments in the novel, the protagonist is motivated by thoughts of how to protect and improve the lives of the animals around her. Her attachment to them motivates her sense of survival more than her own sense of self-preservation, suggesting that survival is often rooted in finding meaningful connections with one’s environment and other living creatures.
Nature as a Dominant Force
In The Wall, nature drives both plot and characterization. Nature is depicted as both beautiful and deadly, as well as an uncaring and unstoppable force. As the protagonist spends more time immersed in nature, watching as the outside world slowly crumbles, she witnesses nature as a dominant force.
The protagonist does not know what or who put the wall between her and the world, or what froze the world beyond it, but sees that nature is unfazed. She reflects, “the people in the valley must be dead, and not only the people, but everything that had been alive. Only the grass in the meadows lived now, the grass and the trees; the young leaves brilliant in the light” (15). While the people and animals on the other side of the wall remain still and dead, vegetation continues to grow and thrive. Nature seems to be the only force that survives the event that spawns the wall, and continues to live, free of further threats. Haushofer captures the strength of nature by not only describing it as persisting, but by using imagery to depict it as strong. When the protagonist sees the leaves on the other side of the wall, she notices that they are “young” and describes them as “brilliant,” suggesting that they are continuing to grow and thrive despite the disaster.
The greatest struggle the protagonist faces is understanding the dynamic between predator and prey and accepting her place in a world that does not account for fairness. After Pearl dies, attacked by a fox or owl, the protagonist sees a fox, and considers avenging her cat. Despite her instinct to do so, she refrains, seeing Pearl’s passing as an inevitability: “From the start she had been destined as a victim for foxes, owls, and martens. Was I to punish the beautiful living fox for that? Pearl had suffered an injustice, but that same injustice had also befallen her victims” (104). The protagonist understands that in the wilderness, there is a natural order, and Pearl, with her beauty and innocence, was not long for the world.
The protagonist observes toward the close of the novel how nature has now overtaken many aspects of former human civilization, such as the road, the village, and even Hugo’s luxury car. Nature’s slow but unstoppable engulfing of these symbols of human civilization suggests that, ultimately, it is always nature that is the most powerful force of all.
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