How Shattered Doorways Symbolize Change in ACOTAR
- jamiebuchkremer
- Nov 25, 2025
- 3 min read
In A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, Feyre’s life gets turned upside down multiple times. A comfortable life becomes survival, the reality she has lived in for nineteen years proves to be a lie, and the immortal Fae she has met turn out to be enslaved by someone even more powerful. In each of these instances, a smashed or shattered doorway signals the closing of a chapter in Feyre’s life.
Doorways and thresholds are common motifs in storytelling that symbolise passing from one stage to the next. When doorways are smashed or shattered, the transition gains a violating quality; it happens against the protagonist’s will.
In ACOTAR, we see three scenes where a destroyed doorway comes into play. In the first instance, the Archeron family’s creditors burst into the cottage, coming for their money and breaking Feyre’s father’s leg. The Archerons use their remaining money for the father’s healer, setting them on their path of poverty. The situation is exacerbated by the father’s subsequent inability to work except for wood carving, which doesn’t pay well. This is ultimately the reason why Feyre starts hunting in the woods, leading to her killing the wolf and setting the plot of ACOTAR in motion.
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While Feyre stays in the cottage’s main room when her father is being beaten, her sisters lock themselves into the bedroom: “Nesta and Elain fled into the bedroom, barricading the door” (p. 12). By putting a locked door in between themselves and what happens in the living room, they resist the change presenting itself; this is an early indicator for their later behavior. While Feyre remains at the mercy of the creditors and their violence, her sisters keep themselves from seeing it. When Feyre goes hunting, they stay inside without contributing to the family’s survival. Throughout the series, they are slower to take each step than Feyre, be it going to Prythian, being transformed into High Fae or finding their mate.
When Tamlin comes to the cottage, it represents Feyre’s life changing from her status quo to a new reality in the faerie world. The warm, comfortable, peaceful family evening is rudely disrupted by Tamlin’s arrival: “But there was a roar that half deafened me, and my sisters screamed as snow burst into the room and an enormous, growling shape appeared in the doorway” (p. 32). With chapter three of ACOTAR meaningfully closing on the word ‘doorway’, the world as Feyre knows it equally comes to an end. A few instances later, we learn that the door has indeed been broken: “He pushed off the table to pace in a small circle before the shattered door” (p. 35). Not only does this prove that most of the weapons humans believe they have against faeries (in this case the wards etched into the door frame and the iron handle) are useless, leaving them even more powerless against their immortal neighbors, but it ultimately leads to Tamlin carrying Feyre off to Prythian.
The third scene where we encounter a shattered doorway is when Feyre comes back to the Spring Court and finds Tamlin gone Under the Mountain. “The gates were open, but the iron had been bent out of shape, as if mighty hands had wrenched them apart. [...] my stomach dropped further when I beheld the wide-open front doors. One of them hung at an angle, ripped off its top hinge” (p. 274). The picture of a door hanging on only one hinge is very vivid; we can interpret this as a metaphor for Tamlin and Feyre themselves. Tamlin, the High Fae who is at the top of the food chain, is powerless against the threat of Amarantha. Only human Feyre – the bottom hinge, so to speak – can now save Prythian.
The open gates and front doors lead Feyre from her relatively peaceful life with Tamlin to the life-threatening time Under the Mountain. The immediate change in Feyre becomes obvious as she reverts to her hunter’s mindset (which she had discarded with Tamlin for lack of necessity) right away: “Another forest, I told myself, another set of tracks. Slowly, I moved across the floor, tracing the information left” (p. 275). She must now transform from the passive, cared-for human woman into the person who will later be called Feyre Cursebreaker.
In each of these scenes, a violent entry and the resulting broken doorway usher in an irreversible change to Feyre’s life. They mark not just an ending, but the violent birth of a new version of Feyre: one who learns to step through, no matter the cost.
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