In Roberto Arlts novel, The Mad Toy, Silvio Astier, the protagonist, is intelligent and sharp-minded, but lives in a poor and limited social environment where systematic education has been denied him.
In his struggle to escape that reality, he forms the Midnight Knights Club with his friends, engaging in petty theft like his fictional hero, Rocambole.
When he gets his first job at a bookstore, he decides to burn it down because he considers books, and the people who use them, a degradation of the ideal he envisioned.
He tries out at Escuela Militar but ends up being rejected. He then wanders through the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires until he commits suicide, which is frustrated.
Rebellion, anguish, self-harm and self-criticism, dreams, reflections and also poetry, are the fabric of this story.
This work by Arlt is considered one of the best Argentine novels for its innovative, modern and harsh style.
The argument presents a determinism in the constant failure of the protagonist, who is an intelligent and willful person but whom poverty and lack of self-control have stripped of all morality.