characters

Alfredo Salazar - son of Don Julian, a more than 30 years old man and a bachelor. He is engaged to Esperanza but him still fleeting to
Julia Salas.
Esperanza - wife of Alfredo Salazar. She is a homely woman, literal minded and intensely acquisitive. She is one of those fortunate
women who have the gift of uniformly beauty.
Julia Salas - sister-in-law of Judge Del Valle. She is the other girl of Alfredo Salazar that remains single in her entire life.
Don Julian - an old man, a father of Alfredo Salazar and Carmen.
Carmen - sister of Alfredo Salas.
Judge Del Valle - brother-in-law of Julia Salas.
Donna Adella - sister of Julia Salas. She is small and plump, a pretty woman with a complexion of a baby with a expression of a likeable
cow.
Calixta - note-carrier of Alfredo Salazar and Esperanza.
Dionisio - husband of Donna Adella.
Vicente - husband of Carmen.
Brigida Samuy - She is the illusive woman whose Alfredo is looking for

settings
house of Don Julian
house of Judge Del Valle
house of Don Julian in Tanda where there are coconut plantation and a beach
Church of Our Lady of Sorrow
Calle Real
Sta. Cruz particularly in Calle Luz, hometown of Julia Salas
The time of the story is the Lenten Season because they are celebrating the holy week proven by the procession they made with the Our
Lady of Sorrow.

summary
The story opens with Jimmie, at this point a young boy, trying to fight a gang of boys from an opposing neighborhood all by himself. He
is saved by Pete, and comes home to his sister Maggie and toddling brother Tommie, and a brutal and drunken father and mother who
terrify the children until they are shuddering in the corner. Years pass, the father and Tommie die, and Jimmie hardens into a sneering,
aggressive, cynical youth. He gets a job as a teamster. Maggie begins to work in a shirt factory, but her attempts to improve her life are
undermined by her mother's drunken rages. Maggie begins to date Jimmie's friend Pete, who has a job as a bartender and seems a very
fine fellow. He takes her to the theater and the museum. One night Jimmie and Mary accuse Maggie of "Goin to deh devil." Jimmie goes
to Pete's bar and picks a fight with him (even though he himself has ruined other boys' sisters). As the neighbors continue to talk about
Maggie, Pete and Mary decide to join them in badmouthing her instead of defending her. Later, Nellie, a "woman of brilliance and
audacity" convinces Pete to leave Maggie, whom she calls "a little pale thing with no spirit." Thus abandoned, Maggie tries to return
home but is rejected by her mother and scorned by the entire tenement. In a later scene, a prostitute, implied to be Maggie, wanders the
streets, moving into progressively worse neighborhoods until, reaching the river, she is followed by a grotesque and shabby man. The
next scene shows Pete drinking in a saloon with six fashionable women "of brilliance and audacity." He passes out, whereupon one,
possibly Nellie, takes his money. In the final chapter, Jimmie tells his mother that Maggie is dead. The mother exclaims, ironically, as
the neighbors comfort her, "I'll fergive her!".