Thank you for your interesting insights. This is one of those unsettling stories where the denouement doesn’t neatly tie up loose ends, leaving readers to think about what might have been going on beneath the surface.

For example, maybe the people who chose to stay ate a lot because there was a void they now felt to fill. Or maybe the food represented a loss of control over one’s life or own choices, once someone allows another to make his or her choices.

The lady the salesman met seemed happy with the decision to hand over power, but the man whose room he shared did not.

And the meals could have also represented how the caretakers saw the people as livestock. After all, without them, what would the staff do?

The entire situation in the hospice seemed to suggest both surrender and suppression. Maybe Aikman felt there was a good argument that the two overlapped.

I think the salesman’s feelings of obligation at the beginning of the story paled in comparison to what he sensed in the hospice’s inhabitants at the end. Maybe, then, what we consider yokes in our life are of our choosing.

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