Confinement
The underlying theme portrayed in this novella with a post-apocalyptic setting is the theme of confinement along with isolation. In the center of the novella is the house and in that house a girl who is unable to go outside, because she is afraid of the infectious disease and the dangers of the "yawning". What follows the construction of the novella's setting is a hallucinogenic portrayal of the merging of the human body and the house. The rooms of the house become synonymous with the parts of the body and memories and the house and the body become one entity. It is a metaphoric representation of confinement and suffocation by a closed space until the body becomes swallowed by the space.
There are indications of the main girl wanting to escape, looking outside, seeing the outside world, but once she tries to reach the door there is something holding her back, her fear of her neighbors but also her inability to let go of the memories attached to the house. The novella represents this inability of not being able to break free, which is ultimately devastating to the body.
The merging of the physical with the abstract
The novella could be seen as a wholly abstract contemplation about life, death, fear, and flesh. It is completely explicit in its description of the destruction of the physical body and transformation into the nonphysical or abstract. It goes against the dualism of light and darkness, where light kills and darkness is safe.
It is paradoxical in its nature, where doors aren't opened even without trying, where doors are holding the outside twisting the ideas of freedom and confinement where confinement becomes a natural state so that the outside looks like a prison. The paragraphs in the novella are also complimented with abstract artwork to provide an image of the distorted view of the world and the merging of the body and the house, of the physical and abstract.
