short summary of the short story The man who could walk through walls by Marcel Ayme

                           The Man who could walk through Walls


“The Passer-through walls” translated as  “the man who could walk through walls” .  The walker –through-walls or The man Who could walk through walls is a short story published by Marcel Ayme in 1941.

                A man named  Dutilleul lived in Montmartre in 1943.  In his forty-third year, he discovered that he possessed the ability to pass effortlessly through walls.  In search of a cure he consulted a doctor who prescribed intensive work and a medicine.  Dutilleul made no change to his rather inactive life, however and a year later still retained his ability to pass through walls, although with no inclination to use it.  However, a new manager arrived at his office and began to make his job unbearable.  Dutilleul began using his power to annoy his manager, who went mad and was taken away to an asylum.  Dutilleul then began to use his ability to burgle banks and jewellery shop.  Each time, he would sign a pseudonym, “The lone Wolf”  in red chalk at the crime scene, and his criminal exploits soon became the talk of the town.  In order to claim the prestige and celebrity status “ The lone Wolf” had grained, Dutilleul allowed himself to be caught in the act  He was put in prison, but used his ability to frustrate  his jailers and repeatedly escape. 

                He then fell in love with a married woman, whose husband went out every night and left her locked in her bedroom. Dutilleul used his power to enter her bedroom and spend the night with her husband was away, but later that night, as he was leaving his lover’s house , he noticed a feeling of resistance as he was passing through the walls.  The pills Dutilleul had thought were aspirin were, infact, the medicine his doctor had prescribed for him a year earlier.  As he was passing through the final outer wall of the property, he noticed he was no longer able to move.  He realized his mistake too late.  The medicine suddenly took effect and Dutilleul ended up trapped in the wall, where he remains to this day.

                Dutilleul “incorporated in the stone”.  And not only can the birds of Paris hear Dutilleul mourn, “for his glorious career and his too brief love” but Gen  Paul plays the guitar regularly “to console the unhappy prisoner”.


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