This prompts the narrator to think back to the time a similar thing had happened, only to poor people.
Caesarino, a poor worker, had died in an accident during the construction of the Mont Blanc, only a few days before his trip back to Ischia, where his family was waiting for him .
The narrator reflects that Caesarino might have been better off on his native island, but he was lured by the New York idea...
It has been argued that the story might have been prompted by the Windsor Hotel fire of March 17, 1899.
[2] It has been suggested that the story was influenced by Gustave Flaubert's Salammbô and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.