Young and restless Nick Adams, the only son of a domineering mother and a weak but noble doctor father, leaves his rural Michigan home to embark on an eventful cross-country journey. He is touched and affected by his encounters with a punch-drunk ex-boxer, a sympathetic telegrapher, and an alcoholic advanceman for a burlesque show. After failing to get a job as reporter in New York, he enlists in the Italian army during World War I as an ambulance driver. His camaraderie with fellow soldiers and a romance with a nurse he meets after being wounded propel him to manhood.

Ernest Heminway wrote the opening and closing narration and was scheduled to deliver it himself, but his suicide prior to the film's conclusion prevented that.

Nick Adams:
Look, what can you tell in four days?


George:
I'll tell ya what I can tell. I can tell ya that three times a day I get hungry and every twenty-four hours I get an irresistible urge to go to sleep in a bed. I don't wanna beg and I don't wanna steal. I don't want a cop tellin' me I'm a vagrant and runnin' me outta town. I'm sorry to desert you, but I'm not cut out for this kind of a life.