The imagery of walls and doors

The imagery of walls and doors turns the difficulty of intimacy between Angel and Michael into architecture. Angel imagines herself as a door through which countless men have passed, while Michael sees a wall so high and thick that he cannot cross it alone. Their contrasting images distinguish sexual access from emotional trust, and the dream of vines breaking into the wall’s mortar offers a tentative picture of how that barrier might change.

The Door and the Wall

Michael describes a woman as either a wall or a door, framing intimacy through the possibilities of access and refusal. Angel answers that she must be a door, since a thousand men have walked through her. Her reply measures her identity by repeated sexual encounters, but Michael rejects that equation: to him, she is a wall four feet thick and a hundred feet high.

The contrast is central to the image’s meaning. The men who have had physical access to Angel have not necessarily reached her heart. Michael says he wanted to get inside her heart, and asks whether making her say his name helped her acknowledge that something was happening between them. Angel grants that it did, though only a little. The exchange makes emotional recognition, not sexual availability, the threshold at issue.

A Barrier That Cannot Be Forced

Michael does not claim that affection has already brought the wall down. He says he cannot get over it by himself, and asks for help. After kissing Angel, he draws back because he knows how exhausted she is, then settles her safely in his arms and lets her sleep. His restraint contrasts with the image of men passing through a door: reaching Angel cannot simply mean claiming access to her.

The wall therefore signifies both the protection Angel maintains and the distance that troubles Michael. His wish to reach her is sincere, but the image also sets a limit on what he can accomplish alone. The scene leaves the barrier in place rather than treating love as an instant solution.

The Dream of Vines

As Angel sleeps in Michael’s arms, she dreams of a high, thick wall. Michael is below it, planting vines; when they touch the soil, they spread green life up the sides and work their tendrils between the stones until the mortar begins to crumble. The dream shifts the image from a structure that resists entry to one that can be changed gradually by living growth.

Michael, awake in the darkness, resolves to give up hoping that he can break through Angel’s barriers, then asks God how he can reach her. The dream does not promise an immediate breakthrough: the wall remains, and Michael still lacks an answer. Instead, its vines suggest a different model of change—patient, organic, and not reducible to a single act of force. The image’s ending preserves that uncertainty; the battle is not yet won.