The Prison | The Prison

At a glance:

Author: Bernard Malamud
First Published: 1950
Type of Plot: Naturalistic
Time of Work: The 1940's
Setting: New York City's Greenwich Village
Principal Characters: Tommy Castelli, Rosa Agnelli, Uncle Dom, An unnamed ten-year-old girl, Her mother
Genres: Short fiction, Naturalistic literature
Subjects: Children, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Parents and children, Prisons, New York City, 1940’s, Theft
Locales: Greenwich Village

Tommy Castelli's prison is the candy store in which he has worked for a decade. Renamed by his wife, Rosa, who disliked his original name of Tony, Tommy was born and raised near this store. He dreamed of escaping from the tenement in which he was brought up, but by the time he was sixteen he had dropped out of a vocational school, where he trained to be a shoemaker, and was running out of options. Adrift and seeing little promise for his future, Tommy began running with a gang that had the money to buy silver café espresso urns and television sets and host the pizza...

The Prison | The Prison

At a glance:

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