Giovanni Verga's Rosso Malpelo Summary

Giovanni Verga was a Sicilian author in the 19th century who was heavily influenced by the French naturalists, who tried to adopt the approach of science to literature. However, while Verga's literature is written from a purely objective perspective, it is obvious that his presentation is not without sympathy. His primary subjects of writing were the poor, working-class in Sicily, and he sought to expose their miseries to the rest of his country. Sicilians were known for resigning themselves to fate and believing that little could be done to help the misery of the poor and this same fatalism is present in "Rosso Malpelo."

Malpelo (which literally means "bad hair"—he was so nicknamed because he had red hair and people who knew him thought it was caused by his evil soul) is a poor child...