The story revolves around a family moving from the to live in the patriarch's native village. There, they find the peasants have devolved into a drunken, ignorant mass which became especially evident during the introduction of Kiryak, one of the in-laws of the family, as one of the first things he does in appearance punch his own daughter violently in the face. The family deal with drunken, abusive family members and loud neighborly spats that drive well into the night to the point where Nikolai, the sick father of the protagonist family nearly gets into fight with his brother Fyolka. At one point, the house they're staying in catches fire, but most peasants do nothing, with the narrator claiming "No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do anything, though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and piles of faggots standing all round." Their situation only gets worse as eventually Nikolai takes ill and dies, but it is left ambiguous if it was due to the medical incompetence of the local tailor.…