When Danny returns to New York after failing to throw a fight for bookie Maxie Fields, Robbins saves him from the consequences of his earlier action quite arbitrarily. In much the same way, Robbins later kills off Danny's daughter — and with the same purpose — to show that it is an unreasoning fate that guides "life among the lowly" (as Harriet Beecher Stowe subtitled Uncle Tom's Cabin). Of course, Danny is just a teen-ager at the time of the fight and only about twenty when his daughter dies; however, Robbins's portrait of Danny's world is effective and realistic just because the character of Danny can tell the whole of his own life story without pausing for one moment of serious self-reflection. His shady dealings escalate from shoplifting, mugging, agreeing to fix a fight, and cheating the Department of Welfare to blackmail, black marketeering, and arranging...