Plot
The novel centers around the protagonist Henry Chinaski. The start of the novel are his first memories. Then as the novel progresses we follow him all the way through school and into adulthood. We start in elementary school and he tells us his experiences. We learn that he has an abusive father, and a mother that lets it happen. He isn't very good at sports, but he wants to be and he tries hard. Football is hard for him, but he likes the violence that comes with it. Baseball, the other playground sport, is the sport he is better at. He hits hard, but hardly ever hits. As we progress into grammar school the focus of Henry's attention, and the other boys, is on sports, violence and girls, as it has been. Then going into high school his father, who pretends they are rich, makes Henry go to a private school where he fits in even less. However, he develops horrible acne, bad enough that he has to get painful treatments from the doctor. Then we follow him to college, and eventually his attempt to get a job.
Read more about this topic: Ham On Rye
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“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)
“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)
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—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)