The book that the doctor’s wife reads to the group is not just a sign that the protagonists are now comfortable enough to have leisure, but also a clear allusion to the blind writer from the book’s previous chapter. Just like the man’s writing sustained his voice and kept him sane in a time and place that were anything but, the doctor’s wife gives her new family something to focus on and a new perspective through which to interpret their experiences by reading to them. The old man allows himself the indulgence of hope and reveals his greatest fear: that his relationship with the girl will end when she finally sees him. Fortunately, love proves to be blind, and by finding romance and connection in the darkest of circumstances, the old man and the girl with the glasses demonstrate how no conditions are so horrific that they destroy people’s capacity for the most fundamental human emotions.