He was just a young man who'd come to town on a donkey, bored to death or something, who'd taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a small-town kid who was bored to death, too. That's the only way I could figure it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The narrator tries to rationalize a young man's odd behavior by attributing it to boredom and chance rather than mental illness.
- In plain terms
- He was bored, so he acted weirdly, not because he was crazy.
- What can you take from it?
- Avoid jumping to pathological explanations for odd behavior.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When is it appropriate to label behavior as 'crazy'?
- How does boredom influence actions?
Another view
The explanation may oversimplify complex motivations.
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