Part II, Chapter 14 Summary

When the dog dies, Robert buries him and with it, his vain hopes. Robert realizes that "intense hope was not the answer and never had been." His bigger problem is monotony. Robert has now accepted his situation and has achieved a sense of peace. He regards his recent drinking binge as the low point from which he can only go up.

Robert recalls two phenomena that had erupted during the final days of the plague: yellow journalism and revival meetings. During this period, several pseudo-scientific articles spread fear and loathing of vampires throughout the world, and Robert finds something "grotesquely amusing" in the effort to sell newspapers to a dying population, but notes that honest newspapers had died the same way.

He also recalls being literally dragged to a revival meeting by a wild-eyed preacher who characterized the plague...