Puzzling parable: "The Wall" by Robert Coover

I'm a fan of parables and fables. They are a sadly neglected form these days, largely because anything that smacks of didacticism is suspect. "The Wall" by Robert Coover partly escapes being charged with being didactic by also being enigmatic, although doing so robs it of much of the pleasure that comes with a true parable.

It's a simple story and a short one, and it can be separated into four parts. Two lovers, highly reminiscent of Pyramus and Thisbe from mythology, fall in love with one another while building a wall to separate their two towns. The town fathers of both rival cities have assured their citizens that only a wall can give them freedom, a freedom that requires discipline and sacrifice. In part two, resistance to the wall mounts. The lovers, who had begun their resistance because of their desire to be together, change during this part and begin to focus on knocking the wall down more than on why they wanted to knock it down: "There was no time now for stolen glances, passionate whispers into the wall; the fall of the wall became their life's project, their existence all but defined by it."

I don't know whether Pyramus or Thisbe's parents paid for the wall.  

After the fall of the wall, we move into part three, in which the lovers realize that, strange as it may be, they miss the wall. The wall had deprived them of their desires, but also been "a stimulus to them." Freedom, however, "had deprived them of their intensity." In part four, the lovers and others who lived through the age of the wall begin to erect a psychological wall, one only they can see. They speak to each other over this imaginary wall.

It is during this fourth stage that the lovers engage in a somewhat stream-of-consciousness dialogue with one another, one in which the lovers, now divorced, try to come to terms with the meaning of the lives they have lived:

Though monstrous, the old wall gave so much meaning to our lives, one said, and the other: Well, meaning, that old delusion. Which, when sought, is just another form of nostalgia. Sort of like love, you mean. No, love, whatever it is, is real in its stupefying way. But it's not enough. No, and there's not much else. That's very sad. It is. Sometimes I cry. We had some good parties, though, which wouldn't have happened without a wall in the way. There's probably a moral, but I don't want to know it. 

So is there a moral, even if it's one the lovers are running from? Whatever the moral may be, it's not a comforting one. They realize they have been using the wall to shield themselves "from anything more disquieting than banter." The moral is something about the "tyranny of time," that walls are destined to be knocked down and rebuilt, but emptiness will last through it all.

Pyramus and Thisbe from legend both killed themselves in an act of tragic misunderstanding. The lovers in Coover's story seem to run from the meaning of the story of their lives in order to prevent a kind of death overtaking them. They recall being told that the wall meant freedom, and now that they feel only loneliness, they wonder if that loneliness itself is the freedom they had been promised.

I didn't find this a terribly enjoyable or insightful story. It's the kind of story a beginning writing student would write. In fact, I wrote one a lot like it 20 years ago. It would never have been published for anyone without a track record, or if it had, it would have been ignored. The parable structure is really nothing more than a cheap excuse to avoid writing a more fleshed-out world or coming up with a narrative where anything is more than just roughly sketched out. You start off wishing for something for a reason, then the something itself becomes the reason, and then you feel empty when you finally get it. That's a pretty familiar story. I don't think the parable form of story really has much to do here. It's not its natural place to shine.