Stuck in the In-Between
To be in-between is to pass through a space where the normal rules of movement, time, and social interaction are suspended—but only briefly, on the way to elsewhere. But what happens if you’re stuck in such a place? As you explore the selections below, consider: how should we approach spending time in liminal spaces? Should we do more to seek them out?
- Samuel Beckett | Waiting for Godot, Scene 2 (1953)
- Pablo Neruda | “Keeping Still” (1958)
- Philippe Orreindy | I'll Wait for the Next One... (2002)
- Marcel Ayme | “The Man Who Could Walk through Walls” (1941)
- Amor Towles | A Gentleman in Moscow (Excerpt) (2019)
A liminal space is supposed to be brief — a doorway, a layover, a moment on the way to elsewhere. But what if you got stuck there? Two tramps wait forever for a Godot who never comes; a count is sentenced to live his whole life inside one hotel; a man discovers he can walk through walls. These works ask what happens when the in-between becomes the whole of life.
Key concepts
- The Prolonged Liminal
- Normally we pass through in-between states quickly; these works stretch them out — endless waiting, lifelong confinement — to ask what it means when the transition never ends.
- Waiting As A Way Of Life
- Beckett's tramps and Towles's confined count turn waiting itself into existence, probing whether a life of waiting is empty and absurd or whether meaning can be built inside it.
- Stillness Vs. Striving
- Neruda urges us to pause and keep still while other characters are desperate to escape — the topic's question of whether to seek liminal spaces sits on this tension between rest and restlessness.
- Freedom Within Limits
- The man who walks through walls and the confined count both face whether freedom is about where you can go, or about how you live wherever you're stuck.
What to know
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01
Stretch a brief in-between state until it never ends and the question flips — not 'how do I get through this?' but 'how do I live here?' That shift turns a hallway into a whole condition, and waiting from an inconvenience into a way of life.
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