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Ellison uses language to create an oppressive, alien atmosphere of despair throughout the story. Beginning with a “chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern,” it is evident that the tone of the story will be uncomfortable, designed to make the reader feel sympathy for the characters while at the same time causing the reader discomfort. The language piles up, creating a kind of suffocating, nauseating ambience. The characters are constantly starving, yet the words used to describe the food they eat is purposefully disgusting. They eat worms that are thick and ropey. They eat something that tastes “like boiled boar urine.” The characters are in a constant state of readiness and stress because they do not know what is coming next, though they know it will be terrible. When an unseen monster approaches from the dark, it is only described with impressions of touch and smell: “. . . it was more a sense of pressure, of air forcing itself into a limited space . . . the smell of matted, wet fur . . . the smell of rotting orchids . . . of sour milk . . . of chalk dust, of human scalps.” These sensory impressions are of something wrong on an animal level, demonstrating the depths to which AM has forced the characters. They are prey that will always be prey, without even the release of being killed and eaten. They are forever hunted and live in a state of terror and despair interminably.

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