Victor leaves the home of his foster mother to take his first job in another town but stops on a remote island to visit his uncle who he has never met. Surrounded by an atmosphere of death and decay, Victor and his uncle symbolise opposite attitudes to life and their existential effects: stillness and movement, light and dark, openness and withdrawal. Ultimately, Victor, in balancing the differences between himself and the old man who has never known love, chooses his own path with hope.