Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and analyzes the guide’s treatment of antisemitism, rape, and wartime violence.

The novel is set during a time of extraordinary upheaval for the Polish people. Consequently, everyone has bitter memories of the war years and of the Nazis and communists who took over the country. Authoritarian rule by foreigners results in the need for secrecy to protect anything of value. When livestock and valuables are likely to be plundered, people hide their possessions. They also hide themselves away whenever a new contingent of soldiers is sent to bother them. The need to conceal also has the unintended effect of making people conceal the painful episodes of their past, even from themselves. Anielica refuses to tell Beata any sad stories: “She didn’t like telling me stories with sad endings. She said she had lived all the sad endings herself so I wouldn’t have to” (9).

Anielica is trying to shield her granddaughter from the atrocities that she herself experienced but is also suppressing a vital part of her own history. The same is true of other central characters. Beata is bemused by Irena’s mulish insistence that nothing changes. She follows the same tiresome routine every day and never socializes with anyone.