Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire grapples with the idea of what it feels like to no longer belong to the world you originally came from. Belonging and trying to find your place in all of this are at the heart of the novel. As well examining the true lengths people will go to in an attempt to achieve what they want.
But at the heart of this is acceptance. That is why Eleanor West built her school, to help her students find acceptance and move on to try and find a place they need. Most of the students aren’t at that point of acceptance that they may never see their true world again. Sumi and Kade are some of the few who accept it. While they don’t like it, they are practical in fact (Kade doesn’t even want to go back as he was kicked out for transphobic fae rules). But aside from them and Jack, most of the students cannot reach that acceptance.
Lorelei, one of the students who struggled the most with accepting that she may never find her door. She and her friends accuse others of the murders as they didn’t go to “good, respectable words of moonbeams, rainbows, and unicorn tears” and make transphobic comments to Kade. But Lorelei ends up dead, having died because she went off alone looking for her door when the students were specifically told to be safe and travel in groups. Her inability to find acceptance both literally killed her.
Jill, Jack’s twin sister couldn’t accept that her door was closed for her. She was willing to kill and mutilate to go back, uncaring for the word and the dead.
“Jill was the one Dr. Bleak locked the door against, not me. I’ve always been welcome at home, if I was willing to leave her behind… or change her” (McGurie, 164).
Jack had accepted as long as she had her sister, she couldn’t go back. So stabbing her murderess twin to then later resurrect her was the way she could get her win-win.
Nancy goes on a journey of acceptance as she learns to at least tolerate back to her contemporary world. A
“You’re nobody’s rainbow.
You’re nobody’s princess.
You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you” (McGuire, 168).
This note touches Nancy, and she truly accepts that while she may never find her door, she decides her fate. Not her parents, not any world, not her door. Hers and hers alone. Which exactly what Nancy needs to find her door to the Land of the Dead. I believe this is what the Lord of the Dead meant by when he told her she had to be sure before staying there. Once she took her fate into her own hands, accept what life had for her, the door would find her again.