Plot
A mean-spirited, abusive hypochondriac sells his soul to the Devil (appearing as a rotund rogue who calls himself "Cadwallader" here, as he likes the way the name rolls off his tongue) in exchange for immortality, adding enough conditions to keep him out of Satan's clutches forever. He is puzzled when the Evil One doesn't put up much of a fight, only stipulating an escape clause which allows the man to die if he so wishes, but doesn't worry too much about it.
He uses his newfound invulnerability to collect insurance money and cheap thrills by hurling himself into life-threatening accidents. Soon growing bored with this game, he confesses to the murder of his wife (who actually accidentally fell off the roof of their apartment building trying to stop him from jumping), hoping to experience the electric chair. However, his lawyer is too good and instead, he is sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. In the last scene, the Devil shows up and reminds the man of the escape clause. Realizing he will face eternity in prison if he doesn't use it, the man nods and suffers a fatal heart attack. The guard discovers his lifeless body and sighs, "Poor devil..."
Read more about this topic: Escape Clause
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)