Summary

In the fifth paragraph, the narrator moves from the description of the festival to the scene of the child’s existence. The narrator describes a room with a locked door, no windows, bugs, dirt, and filth. The only thing the child has to look at are a couple of dirty mops and a rusty bucket. These things frighten the child. The child looks like a six-year-old, but is in reality about ten. The child is feeble-minded and malnourished. The door only opens when small amounts of food and water are brought to the child or when people come to view the child. Sometimes someone kicks the child to make it stand for a viewing. The people, who come to see the child, react with varying degrees of fear and disgust and never say anything. The child remembers a time before it was in the little...