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Or maybe . . . well, I don’t like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander . . . well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.
After the class herb garden dies, Edgar mentions the possibility that the plants died from deliberate overwatering. The thought is reinforced by his memory of the small animals that the children had suffocated. If the deaths are deliberate, the children display an insensitivity resulting from either curiosity or innocence. They may have experimented to discover what happens if they give their plants a lot of water or carry living things in plastic bags. Young children think mostly of themselves and learn empathy for others only as they mature. At this stage in their development, it is unlikely that the children hurt the plants and animals out of cruelty. They are far more likely to have killed them because they are insensitive to what the plants and animals need to live.
The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn’t have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think; nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school.
The class has adopted a Korean orphan, Kim, who dies of unknown causes. The charity suggests that the class should adopt another orphan. But the class “didn’t have the heart” to adopt another. This may seem to reveal a degree of insensitivity or lack of concern on their part, but the opposite seems more likely to be true. The children, the narrator suggests, are too sensitive to adopt another orphan. They neither want to see another child die, nor do they want to experience the pain that will result if that child were to die. The students’ response to Kim’s death shows great sensitivity. They take the death “pretty hard” and sense that an unknown “something” is wrong with their school.
