The Dwarf

Today, I read a short story from one of Bradbury's collections titled October Country. It's called The Dwarf. The Dwarf takes place at a carnival. There is a dwarf who goes there every day, specifically to go into the mirror maze. A girl named Aimee notices him, and one day she and her immature coworker, Ralph, spy on the dwarf through a hole in the wall. They see that the reason he goes into the mirror maze is to look at himself in a mirror which distorts his figure and makes him look tall and thin. He stands in front of it and dances and laughs and smiles. Ralph finds it pathetic and hilarious while Aimee feels sorry for the poor man. She discovers more about him and learns that he is a writer and that he has published stories, notably one about a dwarf who is driven to murder due to society's inability to accept her. Ralph decides to play a mean joke on the dwarf, and replaces his usual mirror with a mirror that makes him even shorter, even fatter than he already is. When the dwarf goes into the maze the next day and sees this, he screams in utter terror. Now, this is where I became confused with the story. The ending did not make sense to me. The dwarf runs away and steals a rifle from the shooting booth at the carnival and he cannot be found. Then, Ralph looks into the mirror and sees a short, ugly man. I'm not sure if it is meant to be that Ralph has transformed into the dwarf or what. But, regardless of the ending, there are a few things that I took from this story. For one, it made me think about how much society pressures people to look a certain way and to act a certain way and what that can lead to. I find myself judging people all the time. It's a natural human thought process, I suppose it is meant to be a defense mechanism. However, I always try to stop myself and think about the person I'm judging. They may be horrible looking, deformed, dirty, homeless, or all of the above, but there is a story behind every person and every situation. I find that I am always rather afraid of homeless people. I don't look them in the eye, I try to walk as far away from them as possible, and I feel very uncomfortable when I approach one while I'm alone. I guess I'm just being careful, but I still feel a little guilty about doing it. Another thing that I thought of, sort of on the same topic, was anorexia. I couldn't help but draw the parallel between the dwarf looking into a mirror and seeing a tall, thin version of himself and a teenage girl looking into her own bathroom mirror and seeing a distorted and untrue version of herself and feeling the need to change that image.