 Jim Stark is the new kid in town. He has been in trouble elsewhere; that s why his family has had to move before. Here he hopes to find the love he doesn t get from his middle-class family. Though he finds some of this in his relation with Judy, and a form of it in both Plato s adulation and Ray s real concern for him, Jim must still prove himself to his peers in switchblade knife fights and "chickie" games in which cars race toward a seaside cliff.