The Tower: Chapter 71 Summary & Analysis – The Blind Assassin
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The chapter opens with the narrator feeling both heavy and insubstantial, like unwashed laundry and blank paper bearing a faint imprint not her own. She has not given up hope but has folded it away for safekeeping. She attends to her body—eating, keeping her wits—and cultivates small pleasures such as early tulips. She pretends there is no secret, politely declining social invitations.
Under a blue stone dome of sky she feels buried alive; the sun is a false light. She imagines waiting for a crack to appear through which her lover might descend on a rope ladder. She acknowledges these fantasies as childish yet clings to them.
A baby’s cries come intermittently, and the sounds of its breathing remind her of tearing silk. She lies in bed with white pillows and a cup of tea to keep her anchored. Reverie intrudes: she imagines him imagining her. In spirit she walks their past assignations, recalling their ruinous love—how they cut themselves on each other. The last time they were together resembled drowning: dark, roaring, yet silvery and clear.
She then pictures herself as a treasure map in his mind: first thousands of miles of land, rock, ice, forest, then a war-torn region, villages, towns, factories, cities of tower upon tower. The outer towers are sheathed in steel, but the central tower is her house, camouflaged. She is the tremulous heart, the zero at the bone—a space defined by absence. He imagines climbing the wall, raising her window, and beginning their underwater ransack of flesh. She wonders how she can ever escape her sheltered life except through him.
Key Events
- The narrator acknowledges feeling buried alive under a false sky.
- She declines social invitations, maintaining the pretense of normalcy.
- She imagines her lover descending on a rope ladder from a crack in the sky.
- A baby’s cries and breathing are heard nearby.
- She lies in bed, using a cup of tea to anchor herself against drifting into reverie.
- She recalls the last time she saw her lover, comparing the experience to drowning.
- She visualizes herself as a map of territories leading to a central tower.
- The chapter ends with her reflection: she cannot get out of her life except through him.
Character Development
The narrator (later revealed as Iris Chase Griffen) displays a profound internal conflict between hope and despair. She maintains outward composure while feeling hollow and imprisoned. Her fantasies reveal a dependency on her lover for escape and meaning. The chapter deepens her sense of isolation and her willingness to live inside a secret world of memory and longing.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Buried Alive: The blue stone sky and false sunlight represent her entrapment in a seemingly normal life. Only she knows the truth.
- The Tower: A central symbol of isolation. She is in the most inward tower, camouflaged as a house, protected but unreachable.
- Zero at the Bone: She defines herself by absence—a space that is not there. This motif underscores her lack of agency and identity.
- Impossible Love: Their relationship is ruinous and secret, sustained only through memory and fantasy.
- War and Landscape: The imagined journey through war-torn territory mirrors the destructive nature of their love and the obstacles to reunion.
Why This Chapter Matters
This chapter provides the fullest glimpse yet into the narrator’s inner life. It reveals the depth of her emotional imprisonment and the degree to which she has constructed a fantasy world around her lover. The imagery of the tower and the buried-alive motif foreshadows her eventual fate and sets up key tensions that will drive the remainder of the novel. It also clarifies her relationship with the baby and her refusal to confront reality directly.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does the narrator describe herself as the “zero at the bone”?
She sees herself as a space that defines itself by not existing. This reflects her belief that she is untouchable, invulnerable, and absent from her own life—a void that others cannot pin anything on.
2. What does the “rope ladder” fantasy reveal about her hopes?
It shows she still expects a miraculous rescue from her lover. Despite calling it childish and omnipotent, she clings to the idea that a crack will appear in the false sky and he will pull her away from her gilded prison.
3. How does the chapter characterize her relationship with her lover?
It was ruinous and all-consuming—“they loved to cut themselves on each other.” The memory of their last encounter is like drowning: dark, roaring, yet silvery and clear. Their connection is the only way she imagines escaping her sheltered life.