Summary

The narrator of “Little Man,” the titular character, speaks in the second-person in this tale. In the opening of the story, he imagines what it would be like to have a child, and suggests that he now wants one more than anything else. However, he realizes that the chances of him being accepted as a "two-hundred-year-old gnome" (60) are remote. He feels envious of how much easier it is for others to produce children while he is unable to do so.

He hears a rumor that a miller whose business is struggling has just promised the king that his daughter can turn straw into gold. The Little Man wonders what drove the miller to make such a claim. The king calls his bluff then locks the daughter into a cellar with the threat of execution if she is unable to turn the straw into...