The Doors Open at Three

 The short story The Doors Open at Three is a story about a man who doesn't want to be lonely without a female companion. It starts at a funeral where it is down pouring outside while everyone is trying to fit inside the church. That is when he sees a woman in her dress. "Then I saw her! Clearly defined against the soaked wall, her feet making tiny timid twists in the rain, visibly vexed, there she was." (G. Cabrera Infante, The Doors Open at Three). He said that he feels like he was struck by a silent lighten bolt. He feels a jolt of energy and of emotion towards this girl. The girl then disappeared and she was gone. He thought he saw her again walking towards him, but then a man came up behind her and they then went away. This most likely hurt the narrator. You could maybe even say that it felt like death to him. He then saw another girl while studying at the library. He decided to draw a self-portrait of her to show her how beautiful she was. "You're being too kind. I don't look like that. Of course, she didn't look like that, nobody looks like that. That was the best I could do. That strangled voice was my modest self struggling to get through. It's a pale reflection. Thank you she said with the second sweetest voice in the whole world"(G. Cabrera Infante, The Doors Open at Three). He decided to walk her to her aunt's house and she said she is there every day. They were sitting on a bench in the square getting very close and she said to wait for him "The Doors Open at Three". He waited for hours and she never came back.      

Comments

  1. shawnOctober 3, 2020 at 7:30 PM

    I found this story to be interesting in how a man seems to be working at a morgue in the city and views life as just essentially waiting for death. Then this woman comes along, and as your quote states, he is obsessed with her. She seems to distract him from his depressing state of view of life until she leaves him. Once she leaves, he goes back to his depressed state and it is tragic to see.

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  2. Kayley NegastOctober 5, 2020 at 9:26 AM

    I found the story more confusing the first time reading it but I read it again because I was looking at death as a metaphor. He is waiting for all these women bit what if they weren't actually there and symbolized his loneliness. The reason I looked at it this way was because Caribbean stories are more dark and convey loneliness and I found it more fitting to the situation.

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