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<title> The walls we build: The sand castle wiped away by the waves of a new day A thematic analysis of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child </title>
On the following pages I will attempt to describe one of the main themes in Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child". The theme I have chosen is: the walls we build to protect ourselves. I Will do this by discussing the importance of two aspects of the setting: The Psychological and Geographic Setting. 

	I think that the Psychological setting is the most important one of the two mentioned above to support my suggested theme, therefor I will start by discussing this and I will focus on two of the main characters: David and Harriet (the couple that own the house). From the very beginning of the book we get to know them as two people standing by themselves at the company party. Already on the fifth line of the first page we get to know that they are being frozen out by their co-workers, we can read (p. 7) "obsolescent, timid, hard to please this is what other people called them, but there was no end to the unaffectionate adjectives they earned". The two of them were different, a little more conservative than the others. 

	They wanted to build a kingdom of their own in their large house, with people like themselves in it. This is very well illustrated on page 30, "The young Lovatts made themselves read the papers, and watch television, though their instinct was to do neither. At least they ought to know what went on outside their fortress". As we can read on page 28 "Happiness. A happy family. The Lovatts were a happy family. It was what they had chosen and what they deserved. ". It continues on the next page with "the greedy and selfish sixties had been so ready to condemn them, to isolate, to diminish their best selves. And look, they had been right to insist on guarding that stubborn individuality of theirs, which had chosen, and so obstinately, the best - this." When Paul is born (the fourth Child) their oldest child, Luke is already eighth years old. Many of their close relatives had been spending their holidays with them during all this time but from this point, one by one, they stop coming (they are probably interested in doing something else after all these years). 
	When Ben is born, and while he is growing up his mother can't manage to understand him (or why so many people have stop to visit them), She is terrified that the world she created for herself together with David is falling apart and she blames Ben for this. Had he not been born this would not have happened. The oldest of the children, Luke responds to the empty house by going to a boarding school (where he once again will be in a big house surrounded by people) and Harriet blames Ben for this as well. 

	Ben feels rejected by his parents. The parents lock him into his room as a baby and he gets very little contact with people. When the family sends him off to the institution that almost kills him he loses the last bit of trust in them. Harriet learns to use his fear for the institution on page 122 when she says to him (after he hit a girl at school) "Ben do you remember that place you went to in the van? He went rigid. He slowly turned his head and looked at her... ... He remembered all right!" She uses this another couple of times and Ben learns to control himself, to not have rage attacks. He builds up a wall around himself in order not to get angry, he does not want to go back to that institution! 

	The geographic setting is also one that is important when describing this theme. The large house in my opinion represents not only the material walls that keep thugs and thieves out but also the walls that protect them from what other people think about them. For all of the children the house represents security, however in different ways. The first four children felt secure around all the people that visited the house while Ben and his friends in the end of the story see the house more as a safe-house, this is illustrated quite clearly when they come home one night after having broken into a small shop (p. 152) "Except for Ben, they were full of excitement and achievement. When they saw her they exchanged glances, enjoying the secret she did not share. She saw them pull out wads of notes, fingering them, pushing them back into pockets" This gives a picture of a different sort of sense of security, it is one created by the lack of interest from Ben's parents. They simply did not care enough to stop them, and they knew this. For Ben the house is also the relative safety compared to the institution where he was admitted. 

	In the novel we see several instances of people building up walls to protect themselves. The parents feel rejected and frozen out from society and create a wall around themselves. Ben, terrified of going back to the institution and abandoned by his parents builds a wall around himself and finds security in the gang. The house has created walls around each of its members, creating a need to be in a group, not being on your own in order to feel safe.
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