Nocturnal Conversation at the Quangels’

Home late, Otto Quangel finds Trudel supposedly asleep in his bed and Anna banished to the sofa, but counting breaths through the dark he catches Anna out: Frau Rosenthal, fleeing the Persickes, is hidden there too. He orders Rosenthal to go to Judge Fromm at dawn and tells Trudel this must be her last visit, provoking Anna's protest that all Otto cares about is his own 'peace and quiet'. Quangel insists he will act alone: 'if it's to be my head on the block', he wants to know why it's there, and it won't be for someone else's doing, not even Trudel. He falls asleep smiling a small, stubborn smile, certain the flat will be empty by morning and that Anna will come round.

Quangel's insistence on solitary risk crystallises the novel's central ethic: resistance that protects the people he loves by excluding them from it entirely. Anna's accusation cuts because it is half true, his caution and his conscience turning out to be the same instinct.