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.