Mad toy is made up of four not-too-close-knit stories, Thieves, Work and Days, Mad Toy, and Judas Iscariote. The reason why they are not too closely related is that the four stories are basically not very related in terms of plot and content, the only connection being that the main character of all four stories is Astier, a young man from the lower class who lives on the outskirts of the Argentine capital. These four short stories actually depict the four stages of Astier’s adolescence and youth, with no obvious timeline linking these four different stages, but they are not completely cut off either. We can see that some common characters occasionally appear in these four short stories. This novel continues author Robert Arlt’s usual style – relentlessly showing the ugliness and lack of hope in life.

The opening story tells of Astier and two friends from his teenage years who form a club, and how they will fretfully take minutes of the club’s meetings, while the club’s activity is stealing, as their dream is to become heroes who rob from the rich and give to the poor. This restless and exciting activity came to an abrupt end during their first theft. Their activity this time is stealing books, they find the technical ones useful and the literary ones worthwhile, but this behavior stops when they run into the police.

Later, Astier had to go out to work in order to survive; he knew about inventions as well as literature, so it was logical that he would find a very good job. But no, his invention of counting stars was considered useless. In this moment, Astier’s dreams and values are denied, and he constantly questions the meaning of survival.

But these stories reflect precisely the life of the underclass in Argentina, and he shows us Astaire’s constant struggle between survival and his dreams. He shows us how Astier struggles between survival and his dreams. He is obviously talented, but he can only work at the bottom of the ladder; he is obviously doing the right thing, but he is humiliated by others; he obviously has a dream, but he struggles to make ends meet every day. The four stories told by the author are similar in the sense that they all depict Astier seeing hope in the valley, desperately grasping it to climb up, and then falling down hard. You can see Astier’s dreams being dashed over and over again, but looking back, this could be the life of the people at the bottom of the ladder: when survival becomes a problem, then of course dreams are just empty talk.

My question is: In this book, we can find the struggle and despair of the underclass people, but is this novel just depicting the darkness, or does the author also hope that the underclass people will catch that little bit of faint hope in the darkness? Is it true that the people at the bottom of the ladder can only run around for survival and do not deserve to have dreams, and that eating bread and counting stars cannot go hand in hand?