The manner in which Agnes devotes herself to the task of slowly, methodically, killing herself and her unborn child seems similar to the way in which the dreams of fright-trauma victims always return to the scene of terror, the source of all their neuroses. Freud introduces this fact as a means of exemplifying the masochistic instincts of the ego, but it also paves the way to something he calls the "compulsion for repetition" (an instinct that is beyond the pleasure principle as such, and serves as an autonomous psychic drive from both the pleasure principle and the reality principle). Just as shell-shocked veterans dream each night of the battleground on which they fought, Agnes systematically gorges herself on fish (having vowed to never again eat fish, in light of a traumatic incident involving eels and a horse cadaver). Her recent pregnancy must have been a source of profound anxiety, as the dilemma of fatherhood hung heavy in the air, and in this environment of heavy stress a certain decisive masochism seems appropriate: in addition to being an act of revenge against her husband for having tried to make her eat eel, it is also an active course of action (one that gives her a sense of purpose), chosen for lack of more plausible actions. One may think that killing oneself is the most difficult thing to do, but perhaps for Agnes, it was the easiest choice to make among the other vague worries that she failed to confront. In this repeated act of eating, she could at least derive a sense of stability, of continuity, and perhaps even a kind of perverse delight at the twisted logic of eating herself to death with a food that she despised.