 It is possible that Axel Heyst is based on a character in the play "Axël" by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, published in 1890, "who detaches himself from life, preferring death to love".The character of Heyst has also been compared to Shakespeare's Hamlet while the story itself alludes to "The Tempest" and the ending of the work has been compared to "an Elizabethan stage play where the stage is clogged with corpses" John Batchelor also points out that "'Heyst' rhymes with Christ and ... a number of hints [suggest] that Heyst is to be seen as a Christ figure".Allen Simmons states that the character of Lena was shaped by Therese from the 1894 French novel Le Lys rouge ('The Red Lily'), by Anatole France.