From the story’s first paragraph onwards, isolation looms large as Daru, a solitary, unwed teacher in a sparsely populated area of Algeria, watches two men cross the snow-covered plateau that meets the hill on which the schoolhouse doubling as his residence lies. Given the unexpected onset of an unseasonal blizzard after eight months of brutal drought, Daru’s students have been absent; as he makes note of the travelers’ progress from his “empty, frigid classroom” (65), it becomes increasingly clear that, already alone in the vast, harsh terrain of his birth, Daru hasn’t seen a soul in at least a handful of days, when the last government food drop-off transpired.

The brutality of the terrain the protagonist calls home is mirrored in the sky above; while the travelers’ visit has been accompanied by a slight glimmer of light—a notable change from the darkness brought about by the snowstorm—Daru knows that, in keeping with its customary pattern, the melting snow will give way to scorching sun that will once again blaze the region’s stone-covered fields, the unchanging sky shedding “its dry light on the solitary expanse where nothing had any connection with man” (68).

The schoolmaster’s oxymoronic tête-à-tête with the omnipresent silence enveloping his existence occurs after his having resolutely defied Balducci’s order to deliver the prisoner to French authorities.