Old Man Goriot

Eugène de Rastignac, an ambitious law student from a poor provincial family, takes lodgings in Madame Vauquer’s shabby Paris boarding house. There he meets the retired vermicelli maker Goriot, who has impoverished himself to finance the marriages and extravagance of his daughters Anastasie and Delphine. Rastignac gains entry to fashionable society through his distant cousin and becomes involved with Delphine while learning how status and money govern Parisian relationships.

The criminal Vautrin offers Rastignac a faster route to wealth through a marriage made possible by murder, forcing him to confront the methods behind social advancement. Meanwhile Goriot continues sacrificing everything for daughters who visit only when they need money and abandon him during his final illness. His death leaves Rastignac to arrange the funeral almost alone before turning back toward Paris with a clearer understanding of the struggle he has chosen to enter.