Ignatius J. Reilly Timeline & Summary

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• Officer Mancuso attempts to arrest Ignatius. He and his mother retreat to a bar, the Night of Joy, where Mrs. Reilly becomes drunk; when they leave, she crashes the car into a building.
• In order to pay for the damage, Mrs. Reilly insists that Ignatius go to work.
• Ignatius gets a job at Levy Pants as a file clerk.
• He writes an insulting letter to one of Levy Pants's distributors, forging Mr. Levy's name.
• He loses the job when he tries to organize the African-American workers to revolt for higher pay.
• After some struggle, he gets a job as a hot dog vendor (he mostly eats his own hot dogs).
• George, Lana Lee's confederate, pays Ignatius to store pornographic pictures in his hot dog cart.
• Ignatius looks at one of the pictures, which shows a naked woman reading a copy of Boethius; Ignatius is intrigued and determines to try to find her.
• Meanwhile, Ignatius proceeds with a plan to organize a political party to have homosexuals infiltrate the armed forces of the world, bringing about world peace.
• To further this goal, he attends a party at Dorian Greene's. Greene at first thinks the scheme is amusing, but then loses interest; Ignatius is ejected from the party.
• He goes to the Night of Joy, where he has learned who the Boethius-reading woman is. There is a huge kerfuffle, and Ignatius ends up in the hospital; his picture is in all the papers. Mrs. Reilly is horrified and embarrassed.
• Mr. Levy confronts Ignatius about the letter to the retailer. Ignatius denies everything and blames it on the elderly and senile assistant accountant, Miss Trixie.
• Ignatius's ruse works, but Mrs. Reilly still thinks he's going to be prosecuted for fraud, so to protect him she attempts to commit him to the Charity Hospital psychiatric ward.
• Ignatius figures out his mother's scheme, and attempts to escape.
• Coincidentally, Myrna Minkoff drives up just at that moment. Ignatius leaves with her for New York.