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“I took advantage of these trips to make the rounds of the bookstores, uselessly asking if they had anything new in French literature. Nothing worthwhile had arrived in Argentina since 1939.”

Early in the story, the narrator relates that his trips outside the house are infrequent, but they are motivated by his desire to supplement his and Irene’s favorite hobbies of knitting and reading. His love for French literature is a strong yet singular part of his identity. It is implied that the narrator has been rereading the same books repeatedly over the course of a few years because he cannot find any new French literature books to read. The narrator’s obsession with French literature reveals that he views himself as an intellectual and indicates his status as part of Argentina’s wealthy middle class.

“Whenever Irene talked in her sleep, I woke up immediately and stayed awake. I never could get used to this voice from a statue or a parrot, a voice that came out of the dreams, not from a throat. Irene said that in my sleep I flailed about erroneously and shook the blankets off.”

Near the climax of the story, the narrator and Irene’s sleep disruptions indicate their growing psychological discomfort with the encroaching intruders. The narrator insists that everything can continue as it always has been because he is defined by his resistance to change. However, the fact that the calm during the day is mirrored by an inability to sleep at night is telling. During the day, the siblings can pretend that they are not affected by their shrinking home, but at night, the anxiety that they try to ignore creeps into their dreams and disrupts their rest. The narrator is unable to acknowledge his own fear in the open, but his subconscious mind tells a different story.

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