Olivier, a modern young man, is in search of the absolute truth. Following an unhappy love affair, he engages in an interrogation with himself, his reflection being Goethe's Werther. He finds himself paranoid, in perpetual conflict with society and modern life, symbolized by a kind of moral court, where all the episodes of his life and those of other men are judged. An imprisoning society to which one must submit, and resign oneself. This is what Mrs. Hollen, who lives alone with her dog, does. And Olivier foresees, through this self-criticism and this social analysis, a new meaning to the word "freedom".