The Ten Thousand Doors of January Summary and Analysis

Section Four Summary: Ninley: Doors to Freedom

January makes her way southwest from Maine to reopen the mysteriously destroyed blue Door she discovered in Ninley, Kentucky, that led to the other-wordly island city she discovered when she was 7. She now knows that the blue Door is another passage to the city of Nin in The Written, her father’s world. She travels roughly so as not to arouse suspicion. In order to make money, she works as a laundress for a few days and uses her powers to get the money she needs. Not bearing any ill-will to her former guardian, January sends a letter to Mr. Locke, conveying that she is alive and in transit, although she does not specify her precise destination. She travels by train and notes that the experience is vastly different from when she was the charge of a wealthy and white benefactor. In Kentucky, January is suddenly forcibly grabbed by an invisible Mr. Ilvane, who holds both the golden eagle feather and a magic compass that points to whomever the holder seeks. January successfully defends herself, stabbing Ilvane in the face with her sharpened coin knife and demanding that he relinquish the compass before she boards another train to Ninley.

Before she returns to the field of the destroyed blue Door, January seeks the Larson family farm. There she meets her Great-Aunt Lizzie, who at first mistakes her for the lost Ade. January introduces herself, and Lizzie lets her stay. The two share their stories with each other, but January is careful to gloss over Doors and other worlds. Lizzie reveals that the bespectacled man with light, cold eyes who bought the field behind the Larson family farm still intermittently visits and checks on it. January realizes that the individual responsible for buying the field, destroying the Door, and separating her two parents was Mr. Cornelius Locke.

Realizing her letter was not as cryptic as she thought, January rushes to the former location of the blue Door, ready to reopen it. There she finds Locke and learns everything. Mr. Locke had emigrated from a harsh and cold world called Ifrinn. There, the ruling chieftains have an ability, called The Birthright, to strip people’s will. Mr. Locke’s particular eye color is a marker of The Birthright and explains why he is particularly persuasive. After he came through his Door in 1764, he destroyed it, so he would have unrivaled power in this world. Locke explains that he has traveled the world in search of Doors, closing them to secure his control and power. During his travels in China, Locke discovers a jade cup that extends his life, which allows him to continue his ongoing quest.

Locke again extends an offer to January to join the Society, so that she might use her ability to help him and his monstrous companions. Locke relays that he had encountered Jane and Samuel, who followed January out of Arcadia. Jane evaded him, but he questioned Samuel, erasing his memory and sending him back to Vermont with no recollection of Doors, his adventures, or January. Heartbroken, January again refuses, leaving Locke no choice but to try to force her to acquiesce using his powers. January begins to write the destroyed Door open again, and Locke, in retaliation, attempts to shoot Bad. January gets in the way of the bullet and writes the Door open using her blood on the earth. Escaping through the now opened Door to the city of Nin, January suddenly feels a hand close around her foot and an enraged Locke leveling his loaded revolver at her. Bad bites him after Locke shoots, hitting January in the hip. However, the bite makes him release January, and he is lost to the Threshold, dissolving in the blackness between worlds.

January and Bad, bloodied, make their way throughout the city, guided by the compass that January took from Mr. Ilvane. The compass leads them to the house of her grandparents, where she meets her mother Ade. January learns that her mother has searched for a way back to her and her father to no avail. The two wait in the city until, finally, Yule Ian returns to Nin. January spends time with her family, learning to sail, before she leaves again for our world to reopen the Doors that Locke and the Society closed, return the artifacts from different worlds, and rekindle Samuel’s memory to restore their love.

Section Four Analysis: Ninley: Doors to Freedom

January’s experience traveling alone to Kentucky is compared starkly to her time traveling with Mr. Locke. She is quick to mention the lack of comfort in her journey and the many times she is treated differently or attracts attention just because of her skin tone. The theme of prejudice and discrimination comes to the fore. In certain cities, she is told that she has to abide by a curfew if she is to remain safe. When she reaches the South, she is forced to move to a different section of the train. January encounters the dynamics of power that limit her freedom based on the color of her skin and her gender.

When she encounters Mr. Locke for the final time, he again offers her a membership to the Society. Mr. Locke reduces her to her unique ability to rewrite reality and sees the potential of using her much like those otherworldly artifacts are used to achieve his true goals. Under the guise of instituting progress and modernity, Mr. Locke is truly securing his and the Society members’ access to power in this world. By reinforcing an order or structure that privileges him and his peers—the patriarchy—while removing the potential for change, Mr. Locke shows that his goals are self-serving. His particular inherited power (called “The Birthright”) removes an individual’s will to fight back or resist and therefore serves him in his quest to break down any sort of resistance or dissent. Here, Mr. Locke’s power is framed as something inherited and is symbolic of the concept of privilege. Although he is from a foreign world, the power he was born with significantly expands in the context of a society that favors wealthy, white men. Mr. Locke is aware of his innate advantages and opportunistically acts to secure that control in a foreign world that cannot resist him. However, January’s resolve shines through, and we can consider her lasting quest to reopen the Doors that were closed by the Society as the fruitful engagement with the past. January devotes herself to restoring the ancient passageways that create rich stories, mythologies, and change in the world. Trains, steamboats, airplanes, and Mr. Locke’s systems of civil society do not.