At the center of the story is Vittorio, whose birth in the early 1960s coincides with his family’s progression to economic well-being. Raised and cared for like a prized jewel, he grows up delicate, spoilt and arrogant like a peacock. Also figuring in the story are his friends. Giovanni the son of town shopkeepers, is the same age as Vittorio. Paolo comes from a poor family. Their younger fiend Davide’s family is from the south. Finally, there is Bruno, a boy from a nearby village, fascinated by the way in which Vittorio tosses away his life. Time, for the group of boys is measured neither by the passing of days nor in school terms. Not one of them attends high school since education is no longer considered an objective by their families, but rather, a waste of time. Their lives roll by as a succession of weeks of madness, pushing them inexorably toward a dramatic end, to a refusal of the future. that refusal leaves them with no hope for anything beyond the desire for a high-powered car or expensive new clothes. These young peacocks have not succeeded in imagining a different future for themselves. No future at all.