Two worlds collide at an upper-class event, where a man working for a charity grovels for donations, and a millionaire French aristocrat looks for a cause that will make her seem altruistic.

A young boy living with his aunt and uncle, who are immigrants from Russia, watches as his family slips into poverty during the Great Depression.

A wealthy man in Chicago suddenly learns about the untimely death of a poor woman he'd been dating. Confronted with her child, whom he'd begun to develop a bond with, he must determine to what extent he will allow his greed to overcome his compassion.

An orphan-turned-salesman loses his job and resorts to bargaining off pieces of himself in an effort to appraise the value of human life.

A handsome seventeen-year-old boy coincidentally meets his girlfriend at the vacation home of a rich neighbor and tries to persuade her to live life at his pace.

A group of working class people run a dangerous path toward a promised Elysium, and those who survive are rewarded with nothing they can appreciate or comprehend.

When a young man leaves his home in Kansas City to find a career, he struggles to settle down in one spot. He wanders, impoverished, across the western United States and finds a transcendent understanding of the human condition.

An impoverished thirteen-year-old boy growing up during the Great Depression gets into a serious fight with an older man over a fifty-cent coin.

A man thinks about his relationship with his parents (especially his mother) as he watches them grow old. He then realizes that he is now old too.

A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.