A psychological study of young intellectuals sharing a room in a tenement house in Warsaw and looking in vain for their place in the society.
Young poet Lucjan Salis shares a room with several other people. His roommates make unsuccessful efforts to find a job, joy and happiness. The circumstances force them to be inactive. Salis dies of tuberculosis. The university student commits suicide after failing an exam. Zygmunt, the author of unpublished poems, loses hope for achieving anything in life. Only his brother Mietek pursues his goal as a member of a leftist organisation.
