Harold Brodkey is a smart man who was adopted at a young age by Joe and Doris Brodkey after his mother died. During the second world war when he was 13 years old, he joked about the tragedy of the war to hide his fear. His mother checked into a veterans hospital in University City, Mississippi, where they lived because the treatment was free. 

Both Joe and Doris were descended from Jewish immigrants and while Harold appreciated what they did for him, he didn’t love them. When his father began to die, he took hour-long bus rides to visit him in the hospital. Harold thinks his family is being cursed for being Jewish. Feeling misunderstood by his peers, Harold set out to get better grades than them. When he began working, Doris demanded money from him, which he gave. Eventually, he began to hide money from her in order to save. When he refused her money or talked back, she became violent. One day, after Doris got very ill, she became so angry with him that she told him to leave the house. When he chose to stay, she began to see him as her equal but still treated him poorly and told him she would be better served with him in an orphanage. 

Harold remembers being envious of women for the power they held over men. He assumes that his mother does not love him because she doesn’t like to watch movies about men. When her mother was sick, she liked to go to Catholic hospitals and lie to them that she would convert so they would give her free service. 

Harold imagines being a physical woman and having breasts and feels embarrassed as he contemplates female fragility. He decides that Doris is evil because she wants freedom and is too weak to gain it. He tells his foster mother that if she was unselfish she would not be sick anymore and she lost her temper on him. Finally, she is swayed by his power and chooses to reconnect with her family and practiced dying politely. 

When Harold refused to apply to college, Doris locked him in his room until he applied to Harvard. When he got in, he felt bad and told Doris he won’t leave her alone. She tells him he’s being silly and that he has to go. When he gets to the campus, he begins to forget her and feel sorry for her as he compares the rich life of Harvard with her sad one lying sick at home. 

In the summer, he stayed home with her and she feels like he takes away the attention she receives from others. That winter, he came home sick and she was surprisingly supportive and told him for the first time that she loved him. In May, she began to take a turn for the worse and he tells her she was a good mother. She told him she knows that this is a lie and asked if she is pretty, to which he responded yes. She told him that Harvard has taken away his knowledge and made him insincere and encouraged him to fall in love after she is gone and she apologizes. In her final breaths she asks him not to leave her and after she’s gone he has a nervous breakdown as he tries to reconcile his love for her with the ways their relationship scarred him.