Although the old man shows his disgust towards children, they are only a scapegoat. In reality, it is becoming old that he is terrified about. The youth scrambling around London make him, in comparison, feel extremely old. Everything he is losing, health, liveliness, and joy in life, they are gaining. As if they are sucking his life away like a vampire.
Most notably in the …show more content…
Contrasted with the “girls and boys on bicycles and buses” the old man has lost his ease of mobility. This physical weakness makes him feel embarrassed and judged by others.
He claims that he “was not this derelict thing “just a week ago, before the incident with the children in the window. Although the encounter with the children in the window may have caused him to look run down and unkempt, I doubt that it would induce a limping gait. He seems unable to accept aging. Seeing the children both in real life and in the window has aged him, not physically but, mentally. He shows that he has a hard time accepting old age.
In the last paragraph it seems as though the old man has made some concessions. He first mentions that he cannot look at the children without a “horrible fear, but also…jealousy”. Then he has a sudden realization. These feelings he is having towards the children “is an old feeling”, something that many old people go through, a feeling of oldness. He sees this in the faces of other adults in the city. He admits that this feeling was not one that came “through the window with that alien moonlight”. In affect he was saying that the window didn’t cause his problems and that his feelings were not abnormal. Despite looking like a turning point for the character, his dislike of children