Hugo touches a deep parental terror: not only loss, but ruin. The paradox is cruel because it forces you to picture survival without dignity, life continuing in the wrong direction. In this novel’s world, children can be shaped by hunger and neglect until “badly” becomes their only available way to live. That’s why the line feels like grief, not judgment; it mourns what a child is being turned into. The emotion is Grieving because it’s sorrow for a living future that’s being stolen in slow motion. It also matches Hugo’s obsession with childhood as a moral test for society. If you’ve ever worried more about who someone is becoming than about where they are, you’ll understand this ache. The quote insists that saving a child isn’t only keeping them breathing. It’s protecting their spirit from being warped by desperation.