The force of the setting is unarguably a baffling one in Tracy's case.
Thus, Tracy is still affected when she has to hear at night the screams of those who are weaker and thus are made to suffer by the stronger ones. She becomes stronger, but she preserves her sensibility, only pretending to carelessness when she sees the atrocities that take place around her. At the same time, she does not become indifferent and hardened like the other women in the penitentiary. Thus, Tracy wins an important victory over the environment in which she has to live, emerging from her fight as a different person. Driven by her desire to see justice done, she exercises her body and her spirit at the same time, through special, Oriental techniques, which finally give her the strength to face her surroundings. When she is locked away in the dark for a week, as part of her punishment detention, Tracy somehow succeeds in finding the necessary strength to face the other women in the prison and her own circumstances at the same time. The interesting thing about Tracy's time in prison however is the fact that she not only manages to survive there, but that she already becomes a different, stronger person.
She saw sinister intentions in an attitude that was probably only friendly."(Sheldon, 80) Tracy had obviously never been in contact with actual cruelty before. Had her mates really menaced her? No, not really. At the beginning, Tracy's mind is so unaccustomed to the concept of evil and baseness, that she tries to soothe her mind into believing she is only imagining perils and menaces: "She was a nervous wreck and everything seemed menacing to her. She felt terrified all of a sudden."(Sheldon, 73) Even from her first night there, she is abused and beaten by her cell mates and, as a result, she loses her baby. Tracy gets in contact with the animal, inhuman side of people when she has to bear the cruelty of the other women in prison: "The three women were watching her, observing her with such insistence that she felt as if she were naked.
In this part of the book, the setting probably plays the most important place.
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