The Presence of Walls, Essay Example

Walls have only had an ordinary value in my mind, and I think this is largely due to how they factor into living on a universal level.  More exactly, considering their different values strikes me as considering more deeply what air means to me.  Both are functional, and both have always been fully accepted by me as such, even if I have also always had an awareness of their importance.  In more strict terms, the only value I have consciously attached to walls is security, or protection.  This value exists in spite of there being no need for security; it is simply what the wall offers in its presence.   Having read Moore, however, I find myself looking from the “outside in,” at least partially.  I am more aware that there is a reality beyond the wall as “real” as that which I live behind it, and this makes me see just how powerful walls are, not only in physicality, but in rendering what is beyond them invisible.  Walls, it seems to me, allow me to frame all reality because what they hide is less than real.

It is difficult to recount personal experience with walls because, as noted, they define life in a sense.  I do remember one wall, clung to when I was a child being chased by bullies.  Behind it, I was safe and free, and I acutely felt this.  I was secure mainly because I was invisible.  This relates to expressions I have heard about walls, but which usually have to do with a negative impulse to hide behind them.  People will say that someone is “boxed in”, or “jealous of their space.”  The word “wall” is often not actually used, but the meaning is clear and refers to the imaginary walls people build up around themselves.  This in turn leads me to reflect that walls, like any basic element of humanity or society, are so ingrained in thinking and feeling that their meaning is subject to virtually any interpretation.  They are also vital to human creativity and communication on the most basic level, as Abbot demonstrates.  As Moore discussed the various meanings people have attached to walls, Abbott’s emphasis on narrative reinforces these, in a sense.  More exactly, Abbot maintains that narrative, so fundamental to human understanding, largely depends on static, fixed scenes.  People seems to need “containment” to comprehend, and this is what walls provide.  They remove the sights beyond themselves, which removes any potential of that external reality complicating the narrative, and so the reality being related is then perfectly framed.  Experience being communicated must be bordered in some way, to create focus; walls of all kinds, then, from those behind and around the movie screen to those in the therapist’s office, seal the time and place, and frame the reality.