The story follows a narrator who meets a family with four intellectually disabled adult children, known as the idiots, while traveling near Ploumar in Brittany, France. The story explores how the children came to be and the sorrow their parents Jean Pierre and his wife experience due to the social stigma and criticism over their so-called "useless" offspring. This ultimately leads Jean Pierre's wife to kill him in a fit of rage and then take her own life.