In our last discussion of In the Basement we examined one causal scheme enacted by the story: Borgman absorbs a series of class-indicators that test his patience, and finally bails after an act of violence and an act of self-humiliation (performed by the grandfather, the family elder) that seems to implicate the narrator.
One of the marvels of this story is that there is a parallel causal scheme, that we can discern if we look at things from the narrator’s point of view, imagining that poor little guy asking himself, just before he climbs into the rain-barrel, “Where did I go wrong?”