Plot
A boat, which was en route to Apia, is temporarily stranded on the South Pacific island village of Pago Pago due to a possible cholera outbreak on board. Among the passengers are Alfred Davidson, a self-righteous missionary, his wife, and Sadie Thompson, a prostitute. Thompson passes the time partying and drinking with the American Marines stationed on the island. Sergeant Tim O'Hara, nicknamed by Sadie as "Handsome", falls in love with her.
Her wild behavior soon becomes more than the Davidsons can stand and Mr. Davidson confronts Sadie, resolving to save her soul. When she dismisses his offer, Davidson has the Governor order her deported to San Francisco, California, where she is wanted for an unspecified crime (for which she says she was framed). She begs Davidson to allow her to remain on the island a few more days; her plan is to flee to Sydney, Australia. During a heated argument with Davidson, she apparently experiences a sudden religious conversion and agrees to return to San Francisco and the jail sentence that is waiting for her there.
The evening before she is to leave, Sergeant O'Hara asks Sadie to marry him and offers to hide her until the Sydney boat sails, but she refuses. Later, while native drums beat, the repressed Davidson succumbs to his lust and rapes her. The next morning, he is found dead on the ocean shore – a suicide. Disillusioned by the hypocritical betrayal by Davidson, Thompson switches back to her old self and goes off to Sydney with O'Hara to start a new life.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“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)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)