I haven't had time yet for more than a quick perusal, but the apparently innocuous children's short-story actually seems to read as a study in ambivalence & the Uncanny, the initial, reassuringly conventional, characterisation of the onion man through the usual hackneyed attributes (notably the patched-up corduroys & the "merry dark eyes" (p.2) described in a previous post) gradually being superseded by the more disturbing, though equally commonplace, association of the Breton immigrant with the mysterious & the marvellous.
