Chapter 16 - Epilogue Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 16, the pills didn't kill him, and Wladyslaw woke up at seven o'clock the next morning feeling nauseous. He discovered that he was happy to be alive and realized he had to get out of the smoldering building. Crawling over debris and corpses, he slowly and carefully made his way across the street. Wladyslaw thought he would find food and water in the old hospital, but the only water he found was in buckets covered with a film and filled with dead flies. He drank it anyway, and he ate some dusty, moldy crusts that were covered with mouse droppings. He stayed for 15 days before deciding to go back across the street to his building, which had burned out by this point.

He hid in the ruins of a flat on the third floor until he...