To others, the world is a peaceful and quiet haven for everybody; some see it as a great wide somewhere still subject to explorations and discoveries; but to the unfortunate, it is nothing but a rat trap that closes in on everyone.
Misfortune does not only take what is left to people but also makes them think ill of the world. It's the sole reason that the rat trap peddler condemned the world as a huge rat trap with earthly pleasure as its obvious bait. So much as misfortune caused him hatred, prejudice and discrimination caused all these bad lucks. It is by these two that he was always tempted to steal, which always plunged him deeper in the world's rat trap. People knew that he was a thief and they had never given him a chance to change. He wasn't treated as human but as a rat trapped in his own rat trap. Prejudice stains the finest of silks much less than the filthiest of rags. Life for the poor peddler was too bad that his every action led to a dreadful enclosure. Fatal solitude is the sentence of the society to him. He was left alone because of his rag clothing.
When he thought that nobody would ever accept him, Edla Willmansson came and saved him from another trap that her father, the ironmaster, was about to set upon the poor tramp. She was the only one who understood that the man needs heat and shelter for the cold Christmas Eve, which to him means death. The coldness of the condemning society was over-powered by the unequaled warmth offered by the girl's kindness. Although he wasn't the man that her father thought he was, Edla gave him the treatment he had always been dreaming of. He was treated the same way as people treat people. He was even raised to a captain despite of being an uneducated man. The world he once thought as a huge rat trap was changed into a magnificent sanctuary by the humility of a girl. The prejudice and the discrimination of the people were wrapped by humility.
