"Wait for the happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees and the night of the moon has so many hundred hours."

Winnie says this in Act One, Part One. It is the first example of her eagerness for death, despite her general optimism about life, and perhaps it is cloaked in poetic language so she can mask her true desires. While she longs for an infinite life, she knows that the infinitude is impossible to deal with, that life is filled with empty hours. Some critics argue that time slows down as Winnie and Willie age, that the frequent pauses in the second act indicate a gradual approach to a death that will never arrive. If this is the case, then Winnie's ambivalent stance toward death is further complicated. As she hopes to prolong life but also wants it to end, she inches toward a death that is always inches out of her grasp.