The Other Side Of The Hedge

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The Other Side of the Hedge is a 1911 first-person narrative short story by E. M. Forster.

[edit] Plot introduction

This short story by E.M. Forster has been interpreted by some as a story suitable for all times.

[edit] Plot summary

It concerns the efforts of a "modern day" (pick any time) person who is concerned and/or consumed with achieving the goals he has set out for himself. He is on a road to what may be perceived as success and keeps close track (through his "pedometer") of his progress. However, the man on the road has become tired and has stopped walking at the pedometer measurement of twenty-five. He is constantly being passed by those who are still moving very quickly and they jeer at him as they pass by (even those who are considered "educationist" exhort him to perservere). The man worries that he may be like "his brother" whom he had to leave by the roadside a year or two back because he had "wasted his breath on singing and his strength on helping others". The road is portrayed by Forster as a dry dusty place with crackling hedges on either side. The man feels a puff of fresh air and sees a light coming from the other side of the hedge and finds that he longs to "force his way in". He is concerned that others may see him in this state of weakness, but decides to investigate the light. As he crawls through the hedge, all the "things" he was carrying were scraped off of him and he suddenly falls into a pool of water. He feels as though he is sinking forever until he is suddenly pulled out of the water and lays on the shore of a place of peace and beauty which, by the admission of those he finds there, "leads to nowhere, thank the lord". The man is suspicious that he may be in a type of prison because he sees that the water he was pulled from appears to be a moat contained on one side by the hedge he has crawled through and the pastoral setting found on the other side. He begins to explore his setting and is disappointed in finding a cross-country race occurring with only one contestant, people engaged in singing to no purpose or "other rudimentary industries" in seeming happiness. He believes that their efforts lead nowhere. The man who pulls him out of the hedge explains that these efforts mean nothing but themselves, that there is no other purpose but the purpose of the thing. The man believes that "every achievement is worthless unless it is a link in the chain of development" and attempts to find his way back to the road that he has left. He is stopped by the man who pulled him out of the hedge, who insists that he first "see the gates, for we have gates, though we never use them". Two gates are shown: the first being "the gate that humanity went out countless ages ago..." and the second being the gate where the road ends "and through this gate humanity - all that is left of it - will come in to us". As the man's senses are overcome by this knowledge, he is lowered down to sleep by someone whom he now sees is "his brother".

[edit] Major themes

What does it all mean? Is it a thinly disguised advocacy for socialism? Or, is it perhaps, simply a reminder to us all that we are human and, while it is true that we must strive to achieve our goals, we must not foresake those that have fallen along the way.^{[citation needed]}