Rose Baker -- Doorway Thresholds in Narnia and Suzume

 When thinking about physical representations of “crossing the threshold” I was surprised by remembering several similar stories where the threshold is represented as a literal, physical door between one world and another. When considering thresholds as doorways, the differences between the character’s interactions with them demonstrate meaningful details about their journeys.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the threshold is not just the symbolic moment at which the hero enters the world of adventure, but a physical portal. The consistency and intentionality behind its dual representational state is supported when Lucy and the others cannot reenter the wardrobe before the appropriate “time.” We learn in the books that children are only able to enter Narnia when there is a need for them; when they are called.

In the film Suzume, the protagonist’s encounter with the portal-door to the world of spirits represents not only the story’s threshold, but the axis mundi, a physical connection between the heavens (or the spiritual realm) and the earth. In contrast to Lucy and Coraline, Suzume does not enter through this door originally, but rather shuts it. The door still represents the threshold as the event that draws her into her journey, but does not include her passage through the door. Instead, Suzume passes through at the end of the story. A key element of Suzume’s journey is her attempt to understand and accept her past and process the childhood loss of her mother. I think that in delaying the actual entering of the door until near the end of the movie, it demonstrates that the journey we witness is her getting “unstuck,” in being willing to accept the truth. She has not fully entered another world, as she holds on to her past understanding and fixations until finally entering.

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