When the speaker comments on Rolf's character traits before his meeting and interaction with Azucena, she describes him as having great determination and strength. She also comments on his unique ability to to emotionally isolate himself when he looks through the lens of a camera. However, this all changes when he decides to wade into the mud to comfort Azucena. He stays with her, helping her physically when he can, comforting her with conversation, and reassuring her that she will be rescued. However, on the second day, Rolf's memories of earlier years surface, particularly his memories of his own tortured past. Some of these recollections involve the horrors of the Holocaust. He remembers burying bodies at a concentration camp and seeing towering piles of corpses. Rolf also revisits his past childhood at the hands of an abusive father and his guilt at not doing more to protect his sweet retarded sister Katharina. Perhaps Rolf's inability to flee this tragic setting and save Acuzena rekindles old feelings of desperation, pain, and entrapment. Looking at Rolf on the screen, the speaker says that "something fundamental had changed in him." Rolf comes to accept Azucena's death, but the past's floodgates of painful memories are not so easily resolved. Rolf no longer takes pictures; he no longer writes or sings. The speaker knows that he is in the process of coming to terms with the pain and the death of the past, and she vows to wait for him to "complete the voyage" of remembrance and "return from [his] nightmares." This is what Rolf must endure to fully heal. For better or worse, Rolf will never be the same as before.