In Doris Lessing’s short novel, "The Fifth Child," Ben, is the main character. He is an unusual child who has trouble adapting to. The cause of his unusual behavior can be viewed from different angles. I will argue that Ben is misjudged by his family and pushed towards being worse. It is as if his family wants him to be a goblin and refuse to see him as a mentally challenged human child. Ben represents human nature in its pure form, neither good nor evil, and his family’s choice of seeing him as evil fulfills their wishes. Ben’s behavior is affected by his families’ view of him. If you analyze Ben’s case from a magical-realistic point of view and come to the conclusion that he in fact is a ”goblin child” (as Harriet calls him) carrying a curse that effects human beings in a dark negative way, you may miss the signs that point out his human nature. I have chosen not to treat Ben as a goblin child but as an unfortunate human child. Ben has an innocent soul. Children do bad things sometimes without realizing how serious their actions are. Therefore, Ben’s inability to feel guilt could be explained by his lack of understanding and the fact that he is an immature child. Later in the novel, Ben even shows signs of being able to love. The fifth child gets attached to John who becomes his best friend. He enjoys riding the motorcycle with John and gets angry if he is not allowed to go out with him. Ben is also able to make friends in school witch indicates that he is more humanlike. All these signs show that Ben is capable of feeling some human emotion even if his family is not able to see past the goblin image and are surprised that Ben can make friends or even be happy. All the grownups in Ben’s family fail to give him a fair chance. They seem to judge him based on Harriet’s’ early prejudice and her hate of him during her pregnancy. She is completely convinced that there is something unnatural with Ben. She even disag