Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to violent repression and antisemitism.

“I wonder what it’s like in the Capitalist countries. I wouldn’t be surprised if children there had never even tasted a carrot.”

When Sasha’s neighbor gives him a single carrot, this highlights Sasha’s inability to see the big picture behind his dire circumstances. He is naïve to the point of ignorance, a naïveté that was carefully crafted through the restriction of information. This line reveals that his understanding of capitalist countries has been thoroughly explained through a Soviet propagandist prism. He knows nothing of the outside world, only that he has been told their momentary hunger will result in a bright future.

“They look like they are afraid, but I know they are just respectful.”

Sasha completely misunderstands his father throughout the novel. When their apartment co-inhabitants grow quiet and compliant around his father, he understands this to be respect rather than fear. His father is a member of the State Security, the secret police force that monitors society for signs of rebellion, dissent, or anti-communist sentiment. Whether credible or not, people are hauled away and never seen again, and it is the State Security Office that is behind these disappearances. That the residents fear Sasha’s father is an understatement. Sasha is incapable of understanding that his father is one of the men who pull citizens out of society to be tortured and killed by the State.