Sure enough, while it might sound like Asterios is praising Hana’s work—he begins by saying that her sculptures are “really strong”—it quickly becomes clear that he is only critiquing it in order to hear the sound of his own voice, and in order to turn it into another one of his dualities.
At first Hana is willing to at least consider Asterios’s perspective, but then as Asterios continues with no indication that he might be open to any other interpretation, Hana interjects that she does not, in fact, see man and nature as being at odds, and clearly wants to say more in defense of her artwork.

By this point in Asterios’s monologue, however, it is too late. Asterios has become enraptured by his own perspective, and does not even indicate that he has heard Hana’s statement. As an added visual punch, as Asterios continues to ignore Hana, the spotlight that should have been on her slowly creeps away and lands squarely on Asterios. Through this subtle use of both word and image, Mazzucchelli indicates that Asterios’s own ideas about philosophy and art are what Asterios’s conversation is really about, rather than a concerted effort to try to understand Hana and her sculpture.  

Asterios’s desire for duality is not purely philosophical, however, as the loss of the novel’s narrator, Ignazio Polyp—Asterios’s stillborn twin brother—has informed much of this particular penchant. As Asterios explains to Hana, as a child, “whenever I was with other kids, I felt isolated, alone, as if I weren’t all there.

Asterios’s sense of incompleteness has led him to obsessively seek out equilibrium in his life, even from an early age. In a panel depicting Asterios’s childhood, a fixation on duality is shown through the objects in the child’s
room: The Prince and the Pauper and The Man in the Iron Mask sit on his desk, while images of
Dweedledee and Dweedledum and Romulus and Remus are taped onto his wall.
Asterios’s constant desire to find the “correct” half within dualities, therefore, is an outworking of him trying to excuse his own right to existence.

In essence, Asterios’ perspective can be boiled down to the simple fact that he believes he is always right, regardless of how educated he may or may not be on the subject. He is on an eternal quest for the truth, and he is the ultimate judge. While this mindset causes him difficulty in all of his relationships, it is demonstrated most poignantly through his relationship with and treatment of Hana.

Like the style in which she is drawn, Hana’s perspective is the polar opposite of Asterios’s more bombastic one. Gentle and soft spoken, Hana often listens before she presents her own perspective and avoids rejecting the point of view of others as much as possible. This respect for others is most clearly illustrated in a seemingly tangential anecdote about Hana’s relationship with her cat, Noguchi. Previously in the story, Hana had revealed to Asterios that she was a vegetarian because she was against animal cruelty. Later on, when Asterios and Hana are at his mother’s house, Asterios asks her why she would be willing to feed her cat meat, as that would seem to run contrary to her own perspective.
