One of the most significant and least recognized features of the early 1940's was that it gave rise to a profound reconceptualization of the terms of racialized citizenship within the United States. The apartment itself is not a static place of amenity that we might associate with the idea of "home," but in an arcane way, it becomes an almost living organism that envelops, mutilates, and consumes the protagonist. And the act of falling, the final gesture is theirs as well-- and the voice in its death agony. When the men die or are defeated, ti is because they have some unremarked traits deriving from a feminity unerringly detected by the opera.