It is important that the audience be taken unawares by Shoe-Shine, that it should experience fear and hope and be unable to guess the outcome of the story.

It is a story that unfolds before our eyes; the children caught in it do not realize what is happening to them…. [They] do not try to express themselves nor even to influence their own lives. It is their innocence, in fact, that creates the story and makes it great. (p. 17)

Since Shoe-Shine is neither an accusation nor a propaganda work, we are spared a "crucial point." The story simply proceeds, step by step, until there is nothing further to narrate. Great skill is shown in putting the single moral-bearing sentence of the story—"If these children have become what they are, it is because we have failed to keep them what they are supposed to be"—into the mouth...