Checo, son of poor Friulian farmers, is a young boy different from the others because he is more intelligent, sensitive and gifted with imagination. The comrades isolate him and mock him, giving him the nickname of scarecrows, and Checo ends up identifying himself with that macabre scarecrow. One day, exasperated, he decided to flee to go to Venice, with the dream of becoming a painter. When he returned home, began a very difficult period of poverty and hunger for him and his family. Checo will end up reacting by destroying the scarecrow, the nightmare of his childhood, and beginning, as a man, to work with men.