Andrea seems to be a womanizer similar to Don Juan, but upon close inspection, he shows characteristics of a man plagued with a broken heart. Elena’s cold distant attitude to Andrea has created a hole in his heart to which he feels must be filled with cheap meaningless sex with other women. In fact he goes as far as picturing each of the women he’s been with as Elena. This senseless passion is slowly devouring him and placing him into dangerous situations such as his duel with Rútolo which leaves him nearly dead. Prior to this, he seemed like a headstrong twenty-something year old with not enough regrets to have so he almost has a desire to create some with reckless abandonment. His attitude on life changes dramatically as he recovers. He becomes enlightened, almost poetic in describing his scope of the world.

                Gabrielle D’Annunzio was describing the italic nobility in very fond terms and found the democratic ways of modernity to be a scourge on the culture. He describes them in a very amiable style, claiming that the class “rendered all the splendor in the sweet life of the eighteenth century” (33). His reasoning is the way in which they lived provided a litany of remarkable accomplishments such as the writing of operas or poems. Since D’Annunzio was a decadence writer and used quite a bit of symbolism, this was probably his way of pushing his political beliefs into his books. Along with the fact that he was a well known proponent of fascism, in which there is a belief that the ruling class should remain in power and that social inequality will lead to failure. It also propagates the idea of Italian nationalism which is why he spoke specifically of italic nobility. Another tie into fascism is the invitation of the Japanese ambassador. The fact that he is at the party leads us to believe he is in fact respected amongst the other party-goers however he is said to only be there for the entertainment of the guests. They tend to mock him quite thoroughly and treat him as more of an object of fascination than a person. This can describe the tentative alliance between Japan and Italy at the time, where they have similar ideals and seem to respect one another, there is very little respect when the doors are closed.