In these stories, economic precarity and sexual frustration in working men convert into violence and cruelty directed at those closest to them, usually women and dependents, rather than at the economic system causing the pressure. The powerlessness experienced at work is discharged downward onto the intimate sphere.
The city is rendered as a sexual and economic machine that uses up male bodies and discards them, with sewers, factories, and crowded apartments shown as interchangeable sites of entrapment. Viewing urban life as biological processing rather than opportunity reveals the individual as raw material rather than agent.
The protagonists are drawn as blank, nearly identical everymen while the backgrounds are detailed and specific, so that no single character stands out as exceptional. This visual interchangeability asserts that the despair depicted is structural and typical rather than the misfortune of one flawed individual.