“Irene never bothered anyone. Once the morning housework was finished, she spent the rest of the day on the sofa in her room, knitting. I couldn’t tell you why she knitted so much; I think women knit when they discover that it’s a fat excuse to do nothing at all. But Irene was not like that . . .”

Irene’s obsessive knitting is central to her identity. It is significant that when she isn’t helping her brother clean, she is perpetually knitting. She is safe in her bubble of a routine and never has to think about the unknown or the outside world. Even though the narrator claims Irene’s knitting isn’t an act of laziness, it is not exactly useful either as she knits so much that she creates piles of unused knitted items. Irene’s knitting and the fact that she keeps to herself and never leaves the house reveals her desperation to cling to the familiar and routine. 

“I took Irene’s arm and forced her to run with me to the wrought-iron door, not waiting to look back. You could hear the noises, still muffled but louder, just behind us. I slammed the grating and we stopped in the vestibule. Now there was nothing to be heard.

“They’ve taken our section,” Irene said.”

At the climax of the story, the narrator hears the intruders encroaching on his and Irene’s side of the house. Without questioning the noises or discussing what to do, Irene allows herself to be forced out of the house by the narrator. Irene lacks agency throughout the story, and at the final, key juncture where she might speak up, she does not. Her total lack of decision-making or input implies that she is even more afraid of the unknown intruders than the narrator whose point of view is all that is provided. Although the end of the story reveals that Irene is distraught by the dramatic change to her comfortable routine existence, she never once questions, confronts, or resists.