For those who have read this short story
is she trying to say how absurd it is that we are made to think that happiness can't come without struggle or someone's suffering, because in the beginning she writes
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and
sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only
evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the
terrible boredom of pain"
but then again she shows how the kid is locked up that's why they could be happy implying that the kid's suffering was needed for their joy or was it to show how absurd the claim is, cause while reading it someone would feel what is the need to keep him locked up you could just free him up how could it possibly affect us but we have been fed this concept so much that we don't even question the absurdity of it.