Professor sums up Stalker's little sermon: so the Zone lets the good ones pass and the bad ones die? […] Stalker doesn't know. It lets pass those who have lost all hope, the wretched, he says in an agony of wretchedness, never once realising that he might (by definition) be among their number. Does wretchedness ever have this capacity to transcend itself? Or is it simply a path to further wretchedness?

[…] Again the impossible paradox of Stalker's relationship to the Zone makes itself felt. The keynote of his life is hope, but the Zone will let through only those who have lost all hope. Stalkers, we learn later, are forbidden entry to the Room. Forbidden, perhaps, by virtue of their belief – their hope – in it.

from Geoff Dyer's Zona