Danny Fisher IS a "jerk" in search of a picaresque adventure in which he might have been a rogue.

Danny has the reader's full sympathy throughout the novel, A Stone for Danny Fisher, because of the point of view, but by any objective standard he misses his chance again and again simply because he fails to consider his options. He agrees to throw the Golden Gloves championship fight to enable his father to start his own business again, but he fails to realize that losing the fight will end the professional boxing career that was to be his ticket out of the slums. To make matters worse, his father throws him out of the house on the night of the fight for wasting his life in pursuit of a dangerous boxing career, but it never occurs to Danny to explain that this amateur fight is to be his...