Beyond character, Chapter 15 advances the novel’s social critique. The arcade’s ruin is not merely atmospheric but political: municipal neglect, speculative real estate, and privatized surveillance have hollowed civic spaces. The attempted restoration of the projector is therefore an act of miniature resistance. Yet the chapter resists romanticizing such acts; the repaired projector offers no cure-all. Instead, it proposes a modest politics of attention—repairing shared objects, telling local stories, making visible the lives otherwise erased by redevelopment. The chapter’s final images—neighbors gathering to watch, a child pointing at a flicker of her grandmother’s face—render this politics of attention as provisional but vital.
