As Rolf is comforting Azucena, he begins to remember his life when he was a child.  He remembers images of his father’s boots and legs, and his father removing his belt and “whipping it in the air with the never-forgotten hiss of a viper coiled to strike.”  In addition, his father locks him in an armoire for hours as punishment. Rolf reminisces about a disabled sister, Katharina, who is also abused by her father.  Rolf and Katharina spend their childhood hiding from their father.  Katharina dies (the reader assumes from the abuse), and Rolf never forgives himself for abandoning her.

Rolf’s experiences of being in an abusive family and spending hours locked in an armoire mirror Azucena's experience of being trapped in the mud.  There is no way out for either of them.  Rolf comes to the realization that “he was Azucena”—they were both trapped by forces beyond their control. Rolf also stays with Azucena because of his guilt for leaving Katharina in her time of need. 

In addition to the abuse, Rolf, at a young age, is forced by the Russians during WWII to go to a concentration camp and bury the dead. He describes the dead, naked bodies as “a mountain of firewood.”  Burying the dead also symbolizes what happens with Azucena when Rolf lets go of her hands, and she sinks into the mud dead.