As Michele ponders his condition, he observes, “Once upon a time, it appeared, men used to know their paths in life from the first to the last step, but now it was not so; now one’s head was in a bag, one was in the dark, one was blind. And yet one still had to go somewhere; but where?” All the characters are groping blindly in a world that has lost what Moravia calls “the traditional scale of values” in the aftermath of World War I. This blindness is perhaps best symbolized by the scene at the beginning of the novel when the electricity fails in Mariagrazia’s house. In the ensuing blackness, Mariagrazia seeks vainly for Leo, who is hiding behind the curtains and flirting with Carla, and Lisa arranges an assignation with Michele.

The entire novel is suffused with gloom and blackness. Much of the action occurs at night, and the rest unfolds under the rainy, gray skies of winter, the season of death. This bleakness also invades the characters’ houses. Mariagrazia’s drawing room is cold and bleak. An arch divides it into two unequal parts, emblematic of the present and the future. Little light shines in the present, where the characters sit, and the other section, the future, offers no change: It “remained plunged in a shadowy blackness in which reflections from mirrors and the long shape of the piano could barely be distinguished.” The dark future merely reflects and repeats the grim present.

Just as the Ardengos’ gloomy drawing room embodies that family’s life, so Lisa’s apartment exposes her sad experience. Inside she looks at the “mute, dead shapes of old pieces of furniture” and a gray, chilly bathroom with “dull, painted pipes”; outside all she can see is an equally dull piece of red roof. From a distance, her drawing room seems an exception to this pervasive gloom, and it is here that she plans to seduce Michele, who, like the room, appears to hold out hope for change. Upon closer examination, though, one finds the same desolation here as everywhere else: “the upholstery was discolored and in places threadbare,...the sofa was torn and the cushions shabby.” Neither this drawing room nor Michele will offer relief from the general dreariness.

To escape this oppressive reality, Moravia’s characters construct dreamworlds. Carla imagines a new life. Michele seeks “a pure woman, neither false nor stupid nor corrupt,” and wants a “world governed by instinct and sincerity.” Mariagrazia harbors visions of wealth and a beauty that will retain Leo’s love for her. They are not above lying to themselves and others to support these fantasies. Thus, Lisa conjures up a rich relative to induce Michele to visit her, even though she could just as easily have invited him without the pretense. Michele tries repeatedly and unsuccessfully to assume emotions that he does not feel; Mariagrazia pretends to a superiority over Lisa which she lacks. Even though the characters often look at their reflections in mirrors, they fail to see themselves and their world as it is, for they have lost touch with reality.