Literary Significance & Criticism
This novel can be most clearly understood as a commentary on globalization via a fictional account of the effects of the Earth's expanding political, economic and social influence over human inhabited planets. Barnes appears to suggest that those most harmed by globalization are the ones least willing to change in response.
Read more about this topic: A Million Open Doors
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“The literary artist will ... portray what he knows, and little else. Imagination is built upon knowledge, and his dreams will rest upon his facts. He is worth to the world just about what he has learned from it, and no more.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)