The play takes place within four hours, in the same location, an urban apartment. The action shifts, from act to act, from the dining room to the bedroom, with an intermediate passage through the living room. The unity of action is maintained with the contrast between innocent youth and guilty parents, or the usurpation of power by the children.

Furthermore, there is homogeneity in the social background of the characters: all belong to the urban space. Victor, a nine-year-old child with the stature, mind, and sensitivity of a mature man, discovers the world in one night. He communicates all the experiences of life, and at the end of the night, he dies, having consumed himself. With the same course that the fruit ripens and falls from the tree.

His journey from innocent, playful laughter to the revelation of decay, towards sadness and knowledge, has death as its natural endpoint. The Pomel and Mani families have social relationships. Mr. Pomel, Victor's father, and Mrs. Mani, Esther's mother, have romantic relationships. Victor and little Esther are siblings.

Mr. Mani prefers to ignore the facts. Victor reveals the scandal. He first drives Mr. Mani to madness, and then to death (he hangs himself on his balcony, dressed in national colors and to the sounds of a patriotic hymn). He leads his parents to suicide. The play ends with the maid's phrase: "But – this is drama!"