It is hard to ignore that this amazing short story teaches
us something quite profound about death and the condition of man when he has to face it.
The narrative provides us with an insight into three men during their last night before
their execution by firing squad the following morning, symbolised by "The Wall" that
they will stand against whilst they are shot. Tom, Pablo and Juan each face their doom
in different ways, yet Pablo finds it hard to make sense of what is going to happen to
him:
I felt
relaxed and over-excited at the same time. I didn't want to think any more about what
would happen at dawn, at death. It made no sense. I only found words or
emptiness.
He concludes that
"death had disenchanted everything" for him, and confronting death left his life as a
blank. However, facing death also gives him strength, as he discovers when soldiers try
to intimidate him the next morning and extract information from him. For Pablo, who is
about to meet death, he finds their attempts to threaten him
laughable:
These men dolled up with their riding crops and
boots were still going to die. A little later than I, but not too much... I thought they
were insane.
To Pablo, he
finds it amusing that the power that the soldiers have over him counts for nothing to a
man who is already going to die. The overwhelming power of death dwarfs their power, and
yet they fail to understand this.
Thus, one way of reading
"The Wall" is to see it as a psychological examination of the impact of imminent death
on humans and the way that facing it paradoxically can be said to give us
strength.
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