The protagonist in the novel is a young man of 19, Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the peasant woman Sophia. From childhood, he almost did not see his parents. He was sent to a special institution for rich children, where he was always humiliated and called, a footman. And after graduating from school he receives a letter from his father, in which he calls Arkady to St. Petersburg, where the main events of the novel take place with him.