But he needs a bicycle and has to get his own, so his wife Maria pawns the family's entire stock of bed linen to buy back the bike he had already pawned. This shows the family's desperation for the money they can find. When his bike is stolen on his first day of work, instead of giving up, Antonio drops everything and travels the streets of Rome with his son Bruno to get his bike back. Antonio searches for the police thinking that they will take this theft very seriously, but she is not worried about such a trivial theft. To the police, his loss is just another stupid bike, but to Antonio, this bike is his life. If Antonio returned home, there would be very little chance of him finding another job, especially if it allowed him to earn this much money. “It only takes on new meaning because of the social position of the victim. Without the haunting specter of unemployment, which places the event in the Italian society of 1948, it would be a completely banal misadventure” (Bazin