Character Analysis
Tom Fury, the friendly lightning-rod salesman, succumbs to his desire to gaze upon the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, and re-emerges in the novel as the carnival's squashed Dwarf. As such, he is one of the carnival's early victims. He is easily the target of reader sympathy since we see him first as a normal man and then later as a freak of the carnival. His character is a reminder that all the freaks of the carnival used to be normal people, which complicates the otherwise simple "good vs. evil" paradigm. It's also interesting to note that the salesman had an inkling of what was coming – his claim that a storm was brewing can be read a veiled reference to the carnival – but was defenseless against it anyway.