The old man with the eyepatch finds pleasure and hope through the senses that he still retains: his newfound belief “that there [is] still life in this world” offers a hopeful counterpoint to the girl with the glasses’s repeated declarations that all of them are dead because they are blind. His playful cloud of foam in the bath suggests a return to childhood and underlines the way the protagonists’ new family allows them to reclaim a sense of innocence, vulnerability, and hope that they had to completely abandon in the hospital. Finally, the mysterious pair of hands, which could be anyone’s, represents the love the old man has found through his new, adopted family. This moment of connection is at once intimate and anonymous, a profound personal love based in the abstract sense of absolute equality and moral responsibility that the protagonists accept for one another.