The basic theme of the story is a philosophical question of tolerance towards old people, marriage, friendship, life in provinces, family values, human values. The main idea is to show that people should treat everyone with respect and tolerance, especially their old relatives, who should be given an opportunity to live the rest of their life happily, without any kind of underestimation and humiliation.

The events in the analyzed text happen in some rural location or a small provincial town, where one of the protagonists lives with his family. The setting of the events in the given extract is realistic and is presented in a detailed way. It provides a background for action and contributes to the understanding of the characters. In the introductive paragraphs the narrator travels in the train, so the first location is a car of the train. The next location is a small station, where the train stops. When the two friends get into a carriage, they travel through the town. A detailed description is provided: “the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the streets except a few dogs and two or three maidservants.” The description reflects the life of Simon, who is stuck in the province with a stout wife and 5 children, his life is boring and deserted as well as the city itself. Than the carriage reaches the final destination: “the carriage turned into a garden that was an imitation of a park, and stopped in front of a turreted house, which tried to look like a chateau.” The house imitates a decent life of a family like Simon tries to pretend that his life is not deprived of the joy of a big city. The life in the province is highlighted and generalized by the view out of the narrator’s window in his room: “My windows looked out across a dreary, interminable plain, an ocean of grass, of wheat and of oats, without a clump of trees or any rising ground, a striking and melancholy picture of the life which they must be leading in that house.” This is such type of life, when nothing extraordinary happens, when everyone knows everyone in the town and its suburbs.