Lock Every Door: A Novel

The longer Jules stays at the Bartholomew, the more the mysteries surrounding the building, its history, and its inhabitants compound. In this section, Riley Sager continues to build narrative tension through Jules’s increasing isolation and her simultaneous quest for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance. These events accelerate the narrative pacing and develop the novel’s themes concerning the Psychological Effects of Isolation and Loneliness, the Pursuit of Truth in a World of Deception, and Wealthy–Vulnerable Power Dynamics.

Jules’s nightmares, repeated throughout Part 3, symbolize the psychological effects of her isolation and loneliness at the Bartholomew. These nightmares also foreshadow the danger Jules will face in her remaining time at the Bartholomew. Furthermore, the nightmares underscore Jules’s feelings of displacement and alienation in the apartment building. This sensation grows after the dream in which Jane tells her she doesn’t belong at the Bartholomew and the animated gargoyle tries to throw her off the roof. These dream sequences infuse the narrative with tension and capture Jules’s growing psychological distress. Even when Jules consciously tells herself that the Bartholomew “doesn’t feel cursed. Or haunted” (132), her subconscious tells her otherwise. Meanwhile, the mysteries accumulate, including Ingrid’s disappearance, the noises in Jules’s apartment, the fire in Mr. Leonard’s apartment, the Bartholomew’s past, and Ingrid’s note in the dumbwaiter.

As Jules spends more time alone at the Bartholomew, her sense of truth and reality become more skewed, illustrating the complications of pursuing truth amid deception. Ingrid’s sudden disappearance agitates and confuses Jules early on, as illustrated by her immediate concern when Ingrid fails to keep their lunch date in the park. Ingrid’s disappearance mirrors Jane’s, triggering Jules’s childhood trauma. Unable to dispel the parallels between the two incidents, Jules’s response to Ingrid’s disappearance blurs with her memories of Jane’s. For instance, Chapter 12 closes with Leslie’s announcement that “Ingrid is gone” (99), and Chapter 13 opens with the line, “Jane is gone” (99). The line is italicized to demonstrate that this Jules’s thought, suggesting that Jules hears Leslie’s news the same way she heard her father’s news about Jane years ago. The past and present merge in this scene, setting up Jules’s growing disorientation. Further, her isolation and sense of impostor syndrome increase her self-doubt and lead her to deceive herself. In the chapters that follow, Jules vacillates between imagining the worst about the Bartholomew and feeble attempts to convince herself nothing is amiss. Her habit of seeing 12A’s wallpaper pattern alternately as faces and as flowers symbolizes her changing thoughts regarding her circumstances, changing from dangerous to safe, threatening to harmless. Her inability to settle on one conclusive version of reality captures the ways in which the deceptive ecosystem at the Bartholomew disrupts her ability to see the truth.

Jules’s interactions with Nick and Greta complicate her ability to discern truth from fiction, illustrating her wealthy counterparts’ power and influence over her. After Ingrid disappears, Jules breaks the building’s rules to seek counsel and guidance from longtime residents. She tries to break free of her isolation, but the socioeconomic differences between apartment sitters and tenants do not allow her to do so. She wants to believe that Nick and Greta are willing to act as her archetypal guides. However, as is often the case in the psychological thriller genre, Nick and Greta gaslight Jules, taking advantage of her vulnerability and isolation. Their actions effectively interrupt Jules’s ability to discern what is going on around her. In Chapter 14, for example, Greta’s insistence that she didn’t hear Ingrid scream convinces Jules that she imagined it. She tells herself that “people can hear things that aren’t really there, especially the first night in a new place. Footsteps on the stairs. Raps on the window” (111). This passage conveys Greta’s ability to overpower Jules’s version of reality, to which Jules is more susceptible because of Greta’s position as a beloved author. Similarly, in Chapters 15 and 16, Nick presents himself as a caring, sympathetic, and attractive stranger, offering himself as a friend and confidant. Jules’s isolation and confusion, along with Nick’s wealth and charm, lead her to accept his statements as truth. She wants to believe that the Bartholomew “is generally a pretty happy place” and doesn’t question Nick (127). She needs the stability the Bartholomew offers and therefore clings to a more positive interpretation of recent events. Jules’s traumatic past also compels her to trust Nick and Greta. Because of the succession of tragedies she has experienced throughout her life, she chooses not to see the world as a dark place, opting to suppress her fears for the idyllic reality Nick and Greta represent. However, these alliances are fraught because Nick and Greta are strangers and members of a wealthier social class with inherent power over Jules.