Setting

The setting of Miami, Florida, figures prominently in this story. The incessant heat and humidity add to Rosa's suffering and make her even more reluctant to leave her room. "Where I put myself is in hell," Rosa writes to Stella early in the story. The frequent mentions of the intense, suffocating heat confirm this impression. The heat is described as "cooked honey dumped on their heads," and "burning molasses air"; the sun is "a murdering sunball." When Rosa burns the letter from Dr. Tree, she thinks, "The world is full of fire! Everything, everything is on fire! Florida is burning!"

In Florida, Rosa is surrounded almost entirely by other elderly people whose productive lives, like hers, are in the past. In the mirrors in the lobby, the elderly hotel guests see themselves as they used to be, not as they are now; they are arrested in time, just...