Plot Summary
Rogaum is a German immigrant running a butcher shop in lower Manhattan, New York City. His daughter, Theresa, is almost eighteen. Attracted to the city lights and life she has taken to spending her time with her friend Myrtle. They secretly spend it with two boys, Connie and George, who are considered womanizers. Every night Rogaum calls Theresa home and reprimands her for being out so late.
She stays out later each night and Rogaum threatens to lock her out. One night he does, and refuses to let her in, intending to teach her a lesson. Instead of staying in the entrance all night, as expected, she goes back out with Connie.
Seeing Theresa leave by herself and not return, Roguam goes looking for her. Upon returning home without her, he finds a young woman lying at his door, who had drunk acid in order to kill herself. The police come, the girl is taken care of, and Rogaum and his wife tell them of their daughter’s disappearance. The police had seen her with Connie, which worries her father even more.
The two police officers, Maguire and Delahanty, investigate the woman's death, knowing she came from Adele's, a nearby whorehouse. They discover that she, too, had been locked out of her parents' house, starting her down that road.
The police find Theresa and Connie and take them to the station. Old Rogaum comes down to get her, enraged at Connie but delighted to have his daughter back.
Read more about this topic: Old Rogaum And His Theresa
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)