[1][2][3][4] In the story the author undertakes an artistic study of the process of formation of the child, starting from the moment of awareness of himself as a person, fixing the main stages of understanding of the world around him.
[3][5] The hero of the story grew up in prison, his first impressions of childhood firmly imprinted spatial reference points, which in the conditions of limited senses became the fundamental basis of his worldview.
V. Pelevin speaks about the desire to break free from prison and at the same time conducts the idea of overcoming the limited human consciousness, being in captivity of illusions about the conditions of his being.
This is the motif of reading in the story, during which the boy is surrounded by "meaningless blackness" as he encounters the unfamiliar words "ontology," "intellectual."
Adult explanations do not clarify the meaning, and as the boy grows older himself, he begins to realize "how uninteresting and squalid all that you have managed to reread so many times.
[9][7] As he grows older, his world becomes more and more uncomplicated, because there are fewer hidden things around him, which paradoxically leads to a reduction in the scale of personality, up to and including complete disappearance.