Importance of Hotel Room

The hotel room in which Eleanor stays in France symbolizes the state of the city and the country as a whole in the post-war era. The narrator states that the room was “once-elegant” but now “suffered from a sagging bed and peeling wallpaper” (290). The room indicates not only the desperate economic situation of a war-ravaged Europe, but also reflects the sentiment of the populace, tired from years of conflict and death.