Two figures sit apart from the people on the endless staircase: one in a secluded courtyard, the other on a lower set of stairs.

[2] The two concentric processions on the stairs use enough people to emphasise the lack of vertical rise and fall.

There are 'free' people and Escher said of these: 'recalcitrant individuals refuse, for the time being, to take part in the exercise of treading the stairs.

Escher suggests that not only the labours, but the very lives of these monk-like people are carried out in an inescapable, coercive and bizarre environment.

Another possible source for the look of the people is the Dutch idiom monnikenwerk ("a monk's job"), which refers to a long and repetitive working activity with absolutely no practical purposes or results, and, by extension, to something completely useless.