In the National Gallery – by Doris Lessing
Memories are a central and huge thing in people’s life. You cannot remember them all, but you can neither forget them all. Sometimes a smell, taste or a look at another thing can make them appear again. In the short story In the National Gallery written by Doris Lessing a memory of a childhood love appears in an older man’s head again. By seeing a girl, who looks like one of his further loves, he suddenly remembers how his love was. He suddenly remembers how it was to be ignored and not to be seen. The short story is a description of the man’s passion for his childhood love, which never really came out of sight and almost was killed by more than forty-eight years, until the French girl appears in the Gallery. Whether it is good that memories reappear, you have to find that out for yourself.

In this quote: “My intention was simple” (line 1), it is very clear that the narrator is a 1st person narrator. The person uses her/his voice to describe what is happening at the National Gallery. The narrator acts passively through almost everything in the story, and the only situation were the narrator does more than just observe, is when the narrator talks with an older man about his first love, at the same time that the French girl sits alone on the bench. This is the only time in the short story where the narrator actually has a role in comprehension of what there will happen later. The old man gets attracted by the narrator to take action, because the narrator comments on the old man’s story and make the old man agree on what he says. When we deal with a 1st person narrator, it is almost always seen that the narrator’s opinions are subjective and the narrator do set her/his stamp on how other things are. That will say that the readers only get access to the people in the short story, through the narrator's filter and opinions. This is an example on how the narrator’s opinion affects the descriptions: “She was the boss girl in this group […] the “card”, the wit, perhaps even the buffoon” (line 43-45). The narrator claims the girl to be the boss in the group, without even knowing her, and it does that the readers believe that too. Incidents like this where the narrator predetermines how the person or something is, occur regularly through the short story.
There are some important persons introduced during the story. As said, the narrator mostly has an objective role in the story, so he does not have a really important role in the plot of the story.
The older man, who the narrator talks with, is a central person in the short story. The man is described like this: “He was about sixty years old, well dressed, a well-presented man absorbed in his contemplation” (line 9-10). He knows a lot about the Stubbs painting, so that makes sense that the narrator calls him “the expert on Stubbs”. When the French girl arrive together with her friends, the older man are suddenly not that interested in the painting anymore. The man observes the French girl like he observes Stubbs’ painting. So take that into account, he seems to still have some deep feelings about his childhood love, and when the French girl arrive, his love seems to finally seize him again. ”She was sixteen, like this one here” (line 74). In this quote it is clear to see that the old man, really can see the similarities between his childhood love and the French girl. The French girl who he meets in the National Gallery ignores him, like his love, when he was twelve, also did.
“She was altogether sharp and challenging, like a spiky kitten before it becomes a serious cat, with measure and propriety” (line 53-55). The narrator and the old man see her as she is lingering between’ innocence’ to the whole other level ‘experience’. That is possible to see in the former quote, where the girl is like this feminine spiky kitten who grows up very fast.
The main themes in the short story is reliving and, at the same time, rejection. The theme reflects in the older man, who does relive his childhood in an instant. Even though it is more than forty-eight years since he was in love with the girl, his feelings suddenly appear again. He experiencing the same, relative to the rejection he got those years ago. That time he was also ignored by his love, and he was just invisible to her. “..Now she was face to face with the man who for the third time had drawn her – or his memories had – towards him. She stood just in front of him. And still she did not look at him. Young things do not see the elderly or middle-aged. She might be staring straight at him, but she didn’t see him” (line 114-117).
In the National Gallery is built around contrasts. One of the contrasts in the short story is the age difference between the two girls and him. His first love is described like this: “She’s like a girl I was in love with once. But I was just a boy.” “And she?” I dared. “She was sixteen, like this one here.” “And you?” “I was twelve.” “Ah, then she would be in love with a young man of twenty and to her you would be just a little kid” (line 71-79). In this quote, the older man says that he was just a little boy at that time, and she was a young woman. His love was not interested in him, because who would be interested in a boy on that age? So at that time he was too young for his love. But then he meets the French girl, and then he is suddenly too old to be interesting and even be noticed. So even though he has grown up, turned to be a real man and then aging, he is still unhappy and unloved.
There are also a lot of contrasts between the people in the story. An example on that are the younger man and the older man. The older man got a lot of knowledge on the art in the Gallery, so that makes the younger man to looks up to him. The narrator thinks that the old man is teacher or mentor to the young man, which makes it clear that the two men not are equals in the relationship. There is some kind of respect to the older man, and the older man does not want any contact with the young man.
All in all, the message in the short story is that you shall not just sit on a bench, and watch your whole life pass by, which the old man does. When he was young he thought that it was too early to fight for his love, and then when he is old it is too late to fight. Seize the day, when it is there, because suddenly it is too late.