Chapters 4 and 5 Summary and Analysis

In chapter four, the author describes his experiences accompanying Jean and his mother to the remote, barely habitable cabin where they live during their winter-long weekend employment at the Southbury Training School, "a Connecticut state institution for the feeble minded". He describes dreading their arrival at the cabin, the loneliness of the routine there, and his constant terror of being left alone at night while the grownups were at the school working as night attendants. At one point, he writes, his fear drives him to insist upon staying with Jean and his mother at the school. He describes the sounds, smells and atmosphere of the place, his terror of both the people living there and the other attendants, and his eventual decision to sleep in the car rather than in the office, where there was no door. He also...