The novel follows the life of Arkady Dolgoruky, a young intellectual, a child of the controversial and womanizing landowner Versilov. A focus of the novel is the recurring conflict between father and son, particularly in ideology, which represents the battles between the conventional old way of thinking and the new nihilistic point of view of the youth.
The novel follows the life of Arkady Dolgoruky, a young intellectual, a child of the controversial and womanizing landowner Versilov. A focus of the novel is the recurring conflict between father and son, particularly in ideology, which represents the battles between the conventional old way of thinking and the new nihilistic point of view of the youth.