“There were two doors into this house. The first, in a small unfurnished room, opened directly onto the sea. It could only be entered from the water.”
“Rooms by the Sea” upon its first reading can feel like a dull narrative without true depth or incentive to portray thought-provoking meaning. However, once read a second time, the properties of surrealism begin to take shape. The story inflicts feeling not through the story itself, but rather through how the story is told. The word choice, the emphasis on duplicates, and the unsettling feeling of not quite understanding all tie into the overall ‘point’ of the literary piece. Much like the story’s muse, it is surrealism, just in written form.
One key indicator of a recurring theme is showcased through the usage of doubles. There are two doors in the house. One entrance leads to the outside, to civilization, to the living world. The second leads out to the other side, to the sea, to the end of life. The house is simply a vessel, homing those ready for the fate of their people. With the narrator leaving the house, one can assume they’re not quite at that point in their life to readily accept the second portion of their existence.
“Passing by the room that opened onto the sea, she saw that the door was closed. She turned off the lights and locked up the house and walked down the stone path.”
The surrealistic nature that not everything is as it seems is something that lasts well beyond the closing lines. The haunting nature of the story and the mythical properties of the characters call into question what borders on the line between reality and fiction. There is creative potential within the unconscious mind. It balances the rationality of life with the contention of dreams and forces the reader to seek out beauty within the unpredictable and strangeness; the unconventionalness of storytelling and art.