Gorky's poverty-stricken childhood formed his life-long compassion for the underdog, and the film is filled with powerful portraits of lower-class people whose qualities of integrity and dignity shine through their hopeless circumstances. Among many others are the half-blind Grigori who works at the grandfather’s dye factory and who is taunted by his co-workers before finally succumbing to total blindness to become a down-and-out beggar, and Gorky’s little orphaned friends, who live out of garbage cans dreaming of a Utopian Neverland. From these portraits come an inspiring, panoramic view of human conditions and conflicts.