A young Parisian boy, Antoine Doinel, neglected by his derelict parents, skips school, runs away from home, steals things, and tries disastrously to return them. Like most kids, he gets into more trouble for things he thinks are right than for his actual trespasses. Unlike most kids, he gets whacked with the big stick. He inhabits a Paris of dingy flats, seedy arcades, abandoned factories, and workaday streets, a city that seems big and full of possibilities only to a child's eye.