A working-class sailor educates himself and seeks literary success to gain entry into a higher social circle and the affection of a woman from a bourgeois family. He pours himself into reading, writing, and self-improvement, contending with class prejudice, artistic uncertainty, and the compromises of the publishing world. After achieving fame and material reward he becomes increasingly disillusioned with social hypocrisy, the hollowing effects of success, and his own losses, culminating in a tragic, irrevocable resolution. Themes include ambition, class conflict, the costs of self-fashioning, and the tension between art and commerce.