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.

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.

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.

In a society where the top one percent rules the lower classes, a teenage girl is forced out of her home by ethnic cleansing and must turn to a wealthy man in order to survive.

A wealthy woman's ploy to flaunt her wealth is foiled by her old friend's seeming indifference to opulence - until they part, and the friend asks for money. The afternoon is ruined when the woman realizes that her obsession with money has ruined her outlook on life.

When an impoverished man shows up to a wealthy woman's door in dire need of help, she gives him ten dollars and tries to send him on his way. The man insists that he return the next day to thank her husband for the money, but she isn't quite sure if things are as they seem.

A woman returns home to her family having just slept with another man. At dinner, her son gets into an argument with his father about their privilege. As the narrative moves back to the time they spent abroad in Nigeria, Burma and Ecuador, fractures in the family life are revealed.

A working class man who wants his children to have everything their rich friends have purchases "Semplica Girls" — girls formerly living in poverty who sign contracts to hang as ornaments in people's yards — for his older daughter's birthday. When his younger daughter frees the Semplica Girls, the family is plunged into financial disaster.

In discussing the altercations witnessed over the course of the day, Stephen Elwin and his family grapple with question of whether the downtrodden and those burdened by prejudice are nonetheless responsible for their own breeding and behavior. Elwin’s earnest and idealistic daughter Margaret valiantly defends their maid, who happens to be Black and also named Margaret, until she witnesses 'the other Margaret' breaking a piece of artwork.

At the dawn of the Great Depression, an aged Black man returns to the Virginia plantation where he was born a slave 99 years ago. His arrival forces the now-destitute family who once owned him to confront their poverty and their racism alike.