In the National Gallery

Does age affect the way a person chooses to look at life, or the way to look at art?

What conflicts between generations may arise when you are discussing topics where one person has more experience than the other? And does an older person always have to have more knowledge than a younger one?

In this short story by Doris Lessing, we are presented with themes such as, remembrance, philosophy of life and different stages of life, and in the end, Doris Lessing might be telling us that you actually are able to gain knowledge from other generations than your own.

"In the National Gallery" starts with the unknown narrator who walks in at the national museum with the intention on picking out one picture that he wants to be looking at the whole time instead of looking at many different pictures. While looking at picture, the narrator gets interrupted by two guys who choose to sit next to him. The oldest one of them starts to tell the other one about the picture, and soon many other people and the narrator are listening along. The younger guy is getting bored and soon the situation evolves and he leaves the room. A whole group of young, French girls enters and one of them sits next to the old man beside the narrator and falls asleep. The old man thinks that the girl reminds him of his first childhood love, and suddenly, she wakes up and starts laughing at the picture with the red horse along with the rest of the French group. The old man stands up tall and again there is a prelude to an unpleasant scene, but the girl walks out of the room and nothing happens.

A first person narrator tells the story, with no information given about him or her, and the perspective is told by the stream of consciousness technique where the reader jumps in and out of the thoughts of the first person narrator.

The entire story takes place at the National museum in medias res within a less of an hour from when the narrator enters the museum. It is in the present, which is seen by the old man, looking nostalgic back in time, being a kid and watching the movie "The Third Man" which is from 1949.

The first person narrator has come to the national museum to look at only one picture the whole time and do find the picture he wants to be looking at. But instead of studying the picture he begins studying the person sitting next to him.

By the minute the old man sits down next to him, he gets distracted and starts studying every detail about him and his look instead of the picture, "He was about sixty years old, well dressed, a well-presented man absorbed in his contemplation" .

A young man sits next to the old man and the narrator immediately starts analysing on this young guy too, while the old man starts telling the young guy about the horse on the picture in a low voice to avoid others to hear it. The narrator starts listening to the old man instead