Giannos

A Short Story

Giannos tells us the real story of real people. He narrates the struggle migrants faced, attempting to come to the USA in the eighteenth century to escape poverty from rural Greece. Our hero, the nine-year-old Giannos, was given by his parents to a childless couple to be their adopted son. Instead of the boy becoming a loved son, he is exploited. He is forced to polish shoes at the public square of a big city and surrender his earnings to his adopted father until he is fifteen years old. Attempting to migrate to the USA, he ends up in Central America. His frugal lifestyle and his ambition to make big money is realized when he finally leaves Central America and arrives in the United States. His entrepreneurial mind and dedication to hard work pays off. He becomes a successful commodity importer and becomes wealthy. Yet he never forgets how it feels to be desperate. He becomes a philanthropist and distinguishes himself in his society until the end of his life. Giannos never marries. Poverty during his childhood convinced him that marriage is not for him. Instead, he wants to have a lot of money to satisfy his manhood in the company of beautiful ladies. Giannos believes that our future is pre-ordained by destiny. He is king to the people around him and is generous with his money to his society at large. Finally, he dies in the company of a woman who, without either of them knowing it, is his illegitimate child!