Claude begins stealing, skipping school, and fighting alongside older boys Danny, Butch, and Kid in Harlem.

Claude's parents arrange for him to spend a year with relatives in South Carolina.

Claude is caught robbing a store with Bulldog and Toto and is sentenced to the Youth House by Judge Bolin.

Claude hosts a birthday party the night before leaving for Wiltwyck and has an intimate encounter with Sugar.

Claude arrives at Wiltwyck School for Boys and signals his acceptance by asking a counselor for a sled instead of demanding to go home.

Dr. Ernst Papanek becomes director of Wiltwyck School and immediately ends the use of corporal punishment.

After his release from Wiltwyck, Claude tries heroin offered by Johnny D. and becomes so violently ill he swears never to use it again.

Claude is shot in the stomach while attempting to steal bed sheets with his friends Bucky and Turk.

After recovering from the gunshot wound, Claude is sent to Warwick, a much tougher reform school than Wiltwyck.

During his third stay at Warwick, the superintendent's wife gives Claude books and he discovers a love of reading.

Claude quits dealing drugs and starts attending night school to earn his high school diploma.

Claude moves from Harlem to Greenwich Village and gets a job at a watch repair shop, feeling like he is starting fresh.

Jim Goldie is shot and killed, and Claude and his peers attend the funeral feeling collectively responsible for his death.

Claude meets Judy Strumph at night school and dates her for six months until her parents abruptly send her away.

Pimp is arrested for armed robbery and Claude visits him in prison, where Pimp seems resigned to his fate.

Claude Brown grows up in Harlem under the influence of older boys who teach him to steal, skip school, and fight, setting him on a path toward juvenile detention before he is even a teenager. After a year spent with relatives in the rural South, he returns to Harlem unchanged, is eventually sentenced to the Wiltwyck School for Boys, and there meets the reformist director Dr. Ernst Papanek, who becomes one of the most important figures in his life. Back in Harlem after Wiltwyck, Claude is shot in the stomach during a petty theft and subsequently sent to the tougher Warwick reform school, where a superintendent's wife introduces him to books that change his sense of what is possible. After cycling through Warwick multiple times, Claude finally breaks from the life of hustling and drug dealing by enrolling in night school and relocating to Greenwich Village, where he begins to imagine a different future. His personal progress is shadowed by the suffering of those around him: his childhood girlfriend Sugar and his close friend Tony both succumb to heroin, and his younger brother Pimp ultimately ends up in prison for armed robbery despite Claude's sustained efforts to help him.

Claude Brown's journey from Harlem street crime to hard-won self-reinvention.

Claude is sent to Bellevue psychiatric hospital after being falsely accused of trying to push another boy out a window.

Claude returns to Harlem from South Carolina and notices that many neighbors have moved, been arrested, or died.

Claude meets Sugar through his sister Carole; Sugar immediately develops a crush on him despite his indifference.

Wiltwyck students are taken on a visit to Eleanor Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park.

Vassar College women arrive at Wiltwyck to teach art, music, and other skills, but the program is eventually cancelled after some boys have illicit encounters with them.

On a summer visit home from Wiltwyck, Claude notices that heroin has become widely popular among older boys and men.

Claude begins a romantic relationship with 13-year-old Jackie while Sugar jealously mocks Jackie's family's poverty.

A man posing as a nurse sexually assaults Claude in Harlem Hospital during his recovery from the shooting.

Mrs. Ganey visits Claude in the hospital and reveals she had deliberately set the bed sheets as bait for thieves.

Exhausted by life in Harlem, Claude voluntarily boards a bus back to Warwick for a second stay.

After his final release from Warwick, Claude is taught the trade of hustling by Reno, Bucky's older brother.

Claude visits Dr. Papanek at Wiltwyck, and counselor Nick tells him that Papanek believes he can still turn his life around.

An acquaintance named Limpy robs Claude on the street; Claude nearly seeks deadly revenge but ultimately decides not to kill him.

Claude attends Mrs. Rogers's evangelical church services and fakes a religious awakening in order to get closer to her daughter June.

Pimp is found at Bellevue Hospital after attacking an emergency room doctor while begging for drugs.

Before Claude ever reaches Wiltwyck, a string of formative smaller events reveals the forces closing in around him: expulsion from school, a psychiatric evaluation at Bellevue, and a first meeting with the girl named Sugar who will haunt his memories for years. His time at Wiltwyck is marked not only by reform but by unlikely cultural experiences, including a visit to Eleanor Roosevelt's home and music lessons organized by Vassar College students. After his release, Claude's time in Harlem is shaped by figures like Reno the hustler, who teaches him to survive outside the law, and by close calls like the one with a man named Limpy that nearly pushes Claude toward murder. His spiritual life follows a parallel track of searching and rejection, from faking a religious awakening at a neighbor's church to visiting his old mentor Dr. Papanek and hearing that someone still believes in him. The pool closes with Pimp's descent into crisis, ending in a hospital after a desperate act that signals just how far he has fallen.

The supporting moments and relationships that shape Claude's world from childhood through young adulthood.

Neighborhood prophets predict that Claude will die before age 21, a fate he accepts without protest.

At Wiltwyck, Claude befriends Mrs. Meitner, a Holocaust survivor counselor who shows him pictures of her family killed in concentration camps.

Claude and his friends are caught robbing a grocery store, and Claude feels so trapped in Harlem's cycle that he wants to return to Warwick.

Lying wounded on the fish-and-chips shop floor, Claude prays to survive long enough to help prepare his brother Pimp for street life.

Older boys at Warwick introduce Claude to jazz, and Charlie Parker's music has a profound and lasting effect on him.

Butch falls from the roof of a five-story building and dies; Butch's mother implies that Claude should have died in his place.

Danny announces that Butch's death is God's sign for him to stop using heroin and immediately packs a suitcase for Kentucky.

Claude stops using marijuana, focuses on his schoolwork, and purchases his own piano, fully committing to music and education.

Claude attends Coptic faith classes with his converted friend Billy Dobbs but eventually rejects the religion as just another masquerade.

Claude runs into T., a former Warwick friend who is genuinely in love with a sex worker named Gloria, forcing Claude to confront his own prejudices.

Danny returns from Kentucky still clean and tells Claude that every person must choose their own time to stop running.

Claude finds Sugar going through heroin withdrawal on the street, buys her heroin, and watches her inject it, seeing her for the last time.

Claude discovers his father at a bar with his longtime girlfriend Ruth and sees a patient, tender side of his father he never knew existed.

Claude passes the Columbia University entrance exam but discovers he cannot afford to attend.

Claude's close friend Tony Albee is found dead under mysterious and violent circumstances, leaving Claude devastated and more determined than ever to survive.

From the moment neighborhood voices predict his early death, Claude moves through a series of experiences that slowly chip away at his sense of fixed fate: a Holocaust survivor at Wiltwyck expands his world, jazz at Warwick opens a new identity, and being shot and left for dead forces him to name what he actually values. The deaths of Butch and Jim Goldie mark a turning point after which Claude stops using drugs, buys a piano, and commits to education in ways he once thought impossible. His encounters with organized religion, from the Coptic faith to the Black Muslims, confirm that he is searching for meaning without finding it in any existing doctrine. Personal relationships deliver the sharpest revelations: seeing his father tenderly in love with another woman, watching Sugar inject heroin, and hearing Danny's hard-won wisdom about addiction all reshape Claude's understanding of human nature. The pool closes on Tony's violent and premature death, which galvanizes Claude's determination to make something of his own life before it is too late.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Claude's moral and personal growth.