The Man with the Golden Arm Summary

The Man with the Golden Arm, Algren’s one great popular success, caught public attention because of the then-shocking drug addiction of its protagonist. For Algren, this aspect—a late addition to the novel—merely contributed to the story of the self-destructive relationship of Francis Majcinek, known as Frankie Machine because of his skill as a dealer, and his possessive, hypochondriacal wife, Sophie (or Zosh).

Like all Algren protagonists, Frankie is not as tough as he pretends; he talks big, but he is a coward who dreams of becoming a drummer. His fixer, Nifty Louis Fomorowsky, sees immediately that Frankie is among the world’s sheep, not the shearers, and that like so many, he chooses his addiction and his doom. As always in Algren’s work, when strength is used, it leads to violence and self-destruction; in an unthinking moment, Frankie kills Louie.

The wheelchair-bound Sophie is the most complicated female character in any of Algren’s novels. Her pride stung by Frankie’s indifference to her love, she had trapped him into marriage with a false pregnancy. Now, though there is nothing wrong with her legs, she insists that Frankie crippled her in a driving accident, binding him all the tighter to her through guilt. Throughout the book, she becomes more demanding and destructively compulsive, driving Frankie away while descending into insanity. Instead of abandoning her, Frankie makes halfhearted attempts to please her, because “a guy got to draw the line somewheres on how bad he can treat somebody who can’t help herself no more just account of him.” Unfortunately, Frankie does not know where to draw the line and so relies on morphine.

In another characteristic Algren touch, it does not matter that Frankie became addicted by chance in an Army hospital. He is doomed anyway, because he cannot rid himself of this “monkey on his back” (a phrase introduced into general use with this novel). For Algren there are no fresh starts, even though trust and love always hold out hope. Molly Novotny offers love to Frankie, but he cannot accept it because his tortured guilt over Sophie alienates him more and more from himself.

In the novel’s world, self-destruction is pursued in the hope of penance, and Frankie gets his one chance for redemption when he is caught shoplifting. In prison, he breaks his addiction, only to return to Division Street and find that Molly is gone, Sophie is crazy, and the one person he trusted, Sparrow...

The Man with the Golden Arm was at first critically acclaimed, and it won the National Book Award in 1950. The protagonist, Frankie Machine (Majcinek), is also known as The Dealer. His metaphoric golden arm is a reference to his dice expertise at Zero Schwiefka’s gambling parlor and to his injecting morphine to escape his problems. The novel is set in the somber buildings and dark alleys of Division Street in Chicago.

Often considered a naturalistic novel in the tradition of Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser, The Man with the Golden Arm presents morally bankrupt characters who cruelly exploit one another to survive. Violet Koskoska, for example, is a sexual predator who habitually locks her aged husband in a broom closet. Violet’s lover, Sparrow Saltskin, a street thug, only wants Violet because she is easy sex. Sparrow even finishes eating a sausage sandwich while climbing into bed with Violet. It is during this grotesquely humorous scene that Violet states one of the novel’s themes, that is, that any love is better than no love at all.

The self-destructive quest for love as a liberating force pervades the novel. Frankie’s wife Sophie believes herself to be permanently crippled from a car accident caused by Frankie’s drunk driving. Sophie keeps newspaper clippings of particularly freakish deaths and ridicules Frankie’s dream of playing drums in a jazz band. A crutch is a symbol of her madness....