At the beginning of Chapter 4, Jonas finds his friends, Asher and Fiona, volunteering in the House of the Old, which is like a present-day nursing home. He volunteers there also. In the House of the Old, the community's elderly people live while awaiting their release.
While at the House of the Old, Jonas is instructed to help bathe the Old in the bathing room. We learn that it is against the rules for anyone to look at any naked person except at infants (newchildren) and the Old. While bathing a woman named Larissa, Jonas thinks that the bathing room feels safe because Larissa looks trusting and free. These feelings are ironic because people gave up their freedoms when they decided to live in a community of Sameness. Their feeling of security is an illusion, a false appearance.
Larissa speaks to Jonas about the release of an Old named Roberto. At the release ceremony, which was held earlier that morning, Roberto's life story was told before he was released. According to Larissa, the ceremony is designed to make each per-son's life sound meaningful. Larissa corrects herself to say that all lives are meaningful. Here, Lowry uses irony once again to emphasize a key theme: The people are under the impression that their lives are meaningful, but in reality they all live meaningless lives. They behave like robots because they chose Sameness over individuality (differences). Larissa also mentions that she doesn't think a woman named Edna, who has been released, was "very smart." Larissa's comment about Edna shows that people in the community do judge one another and are aware of differences despite their efforts to create a community of uniformity. Control of the people is once again emphasized when Larissa and Jonas suggest changing a rule and then laugh because it could take a lifetime or longer to get a rule changed.
