The "house of Avellanos" is, allegorically speaking, the ideal of the
benevolent nation-state, and this description symbolically depicts that ideal
in a state of final collapse. It is blinded by the force of its own belief (the
"shuttered windows"; compare Charles Gould's order to "shut these
windows" when his own ideal has collapsed ),
its power of imposing a delimiting boundary has dissolved ("the doors standing
open"), and it no longer commands allegiance ("deserted by all the servants").
The "Negro at the gate" bears a relationship to the Negro at the tail
of Decoud's locomotive :
both are somewhat racist symbols signfiying the end of an ideal and a return to
chaotic darkness.