The narrator describes symbolically festive sights to differentiate Milan from the squalor of the front lines. These combine to lend a peaceful holiday mood to the city as a respite from the fighting. Electric lights come on to illuminate the shop windows. Butchers display fine game such as foxes and deer, “with snow powdered on the fur” (270). A woman sells roasted chestnuts on one of the bridges across a canal. The hospital is described as “very beautiful” and remodeled with new pavilions made of brick.

Midway through the story, more of these images are sprinkled into the narrative, as when the Café Cova is described as “rich and warm and not too brightly lighted” (269), while “patriotic” girls join the men at their tables. The effect makes the town seem like heaven, which is fitting because a kind of Judgment Day unfolds as the story sorts the soldiers into different types based on their war behavior and suffering.

The rehabilitation machines are symbols of society’s effort to atone for the injuries the soldiers received fighting in defense of their homeland. The photos of successful previous patients are theatrical props for encouraging the patients to continue the treatments energetically.