Not all doors lead to magic: From escapism to dislocation in literature

This paper examines how the literary motif of the door, or more broadly the portal, evolves across three works: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (1950), and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (2017). While each text features a passageway into another world, the meaning of the threshold does not remain fixed and begins to shift with its historical context. In Carroll's Victorian fantasy, the rabbit hole and the small door in Wonderland reflect curiosity and imaginative escape, offering a playful, if somewhat disorienting, entry into the fantastical. Lewis's wardrobe, written in the aftermath of global conflict, becomes a site of moral testing, where themes of sacrifice, faith, and redemption begin to reshape the idea of crossing into another realm. In contrast, Hamid's doors in Exit West move away from enchantment altogether; they function as abrupt passages that mirror contemporary experiences of migration, loss, and displacement. By tracing this transformation, the paper suggests that portals are not merely narrative devices, but as constantly evolving thresholds across these texts, reflecting a shift from magical escape to the unsettled realities of contemporary displacement.