"He is not to be confused with the lonely ones" (Blog 5)

     The short story entitled The Box Man juxtaposed two types of people: the alone, and the lonely. When one first starts to read The Box Man, they likely don't differentiate between these two types of people. However, as they continue to read, the differences become vast and obvious. The main difference is the way the alone and the lonely people feel about their situations. The author chooses two old ladies with no one around, and presumably no family nearby to care about them, as her examples of loneliness. She describes them as slow-moving, slightly mopey, and generally upset about the hand life has dealt them. The ladies are labeled as "lonely". However,when she compares them to her example of satisfied aloneness, a homeless man she refers to as "The Box Man", she says "He is not to be confused with the lonely ones". She does not consider The Box Man "lonely" because he is satisfied with his life. He searches around town all day for boxes to fashion into a home. He does this alone. Still, he is not lonely. He has found a friend in his boxes and himself. They keep him satisfied and he seems as though he has no other desires in his life, beyond collecting more boxes. The idea that being alone doesn't necessarily point to being lonely is the idea which the author of The Box Man hoped her readers would understand after reading the story.