Answer: prejudice, hypocrisy, and taking advantage of others.
Explanation: The setting of “The Youngest Doll” is a decaying sugar plantation in rural Puerto Rico, where an aging dollmaker lives with her nine nieces. She is a member of the “extinct sugarcane aristocracy” and the story takes place as her family’s social position and wealth are rapidly disappearing (“The Youngest Doll,” p. 6). One day when the aunt, then a young woman, bathed in the river, she was bitten by a river prawn. The doctor treated her wound superficially, then told her that the prawn had embedded itself in her leg and that it would take years for him to treat the wound, which might never heal.