Under the Whispering Door

The first five chapters of Under the Whispering Door introduce Wallace Price as a cold and selfish man who cares for nothing but his business and trusts no one but himself. Wallace, in these early chapters, clearly has no understanding of The Importance of Connection. His firing of Patricia in the first chapter shows how Wallace views others merely as replaceable parts of a machine, and how he treats relationships as entirely transactional. Ironically, Patricia believes Wallace has noticed how sad she has been at work and that he invited her in to vent about her many personal issues. This reflects Patricia’s character more than the buried empathy Wallace later finds in himself; she insists that she knew Wallace was kind despite what others say about him, which shows that her assumptions about his reasons for summoning her are colored by her determination to see good in him. However, Wallace doesn’t consider changing his mind about firing her, even when she tells him that her husband recently lost his job, her son is getting married and about to become a father, and her daughter is receiving a scholarship from the company. Instead, Wallace makes sure to sever their ties cleanly and completely, cutting off any connection Patricia or her family will have with him or his firm.

Wallace’s commitment to success in his job above all else is made even more clear after his death. When he demands to be sent back to his real life, Nelson mocks him. He says, “[Y]ou’re upset you’re dead, but not because of friends or family or some other such drivel, but because you have work to do, and this is an inconvenience” (86), highlighting the absurdity of Wallace’s values even when Wallace cannot see it for himself. Wallace, who is still in denial about being dead, cannot easily let go of the ideals around which he has built his life. When Hugo and the others offer Wallace their help, he does not trust them and tries to run away, showing just how little faith he has in others. When Wallace first arrives in the tea shop, he still thinks of himself as someone important, who can get what he wants through power and logic. Confronted with a problem he cannot solve through cold rationality—his own mortality—Wallace panics and lashes out.

Perhaps the most poignant indicator of Wallace’s character is the fact that only four people he knew in life attend his funeral. Wallace complains the entire service about the quality of their mourning. At this point, Wallace is still self-confident about his lifestyle; he genuinely believes that those in attendance are there because they are sad about his death, and he is shocked and angered by their attitudes. As he did not make an effort to show others he cared about anyone but himself in life, the few people he spent time with return the favor after his death. Wallace believes this is a reflection of their characters, not his; he is especially critical of and rude to his ex-wife. Klune’s early characterization of Wallace paints an image of an unlikable, self-important man thrust into a situation that, for possibly the first time, is completely out of his control. Wallace has a lot of potential to improve, but he is not yet ready to admit that he has made any mistakes in the first place.

Wallace’s stubbornness affects his transition into death as he has a hard time believing any of his preconceived notions about the afterlife are false. After the death of his grandfather, Wallace observed how upset his parents were, particularly his mother, the only person for whom Wallace is shown to have any kind of affection feelings. As a child, Wallace recognized the discomfort of extreme negative emotions; watching his mother break down prompted him to repress his emotions and to swear that he would never “let” himself die like his grandfather. This illusion is thoroughly shattered once Mei shows him his coffin being lowered into the ground, and Wallace, faced with irrefutable proof of The Transitory Nature of Life, struggles to understand his new circumstances. This frightening and confusing change causes his long-stifled emotions to come to the forefront, beginning with anger and panic. Wallace also entertains broader notions about the afterlife, which leads him to mistake Nelson and Hugo for gods and the tea shop for Hell. Though Mei tries to explain to him that Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and God are all manmade ideas, Wallace’s beliefs are so ingrained that he can only react with denial when faced with the reality of his passing, which is so wildly different from what he anticipated.

More than anything else, Wallace struggles with the fact that he is actually dead. He believes he can be brought back to life if he only does the right things or speaks to the right people, which is how much of his life progressed. Ironically, saying the right thing to the right person is what eventually brings him back to life at the end of the novel; however, Wallace has not yet gone through the character growth he needs for that situation to occur.

In these early chapters, Klune uses Wallace to illustrate just how deep-rooted his culture’s ideas about death are, while also showing just how much people try to avoid the topic entirely. Wallace is representative of traditional Western culture and its complex yet avoidant relationship with the concept of death. Klune examines and breaks down this issue throughout the remainder of Under the Whispering Door, approaching death with gravitas and irreverence in equal measure.