A young man leaves his boardinghouse room on an uncomfortably hot summer’s day in St. Petersburg. As he descends the steps, he is overcome with a dread of meeting his landlady, who lives on the floor below. He owes her several months’ rent and recoils at the thought of having to make excuses to her. The narrator states that this young man “had fallen into a state of nervous depression akin to hypochondria” and so avoids contact with other people. As he leaves the boardinghouse, the young man turns his thoughts to an extreme, though unspecified, act that he is thinking about committing. He considers himself incapable of the act—if he lacks the stomach even to face his landlady, it seems impossible that he would ever go through with the deed that he now mulls. The narrator identifies the young man as the protagonist (“our hero”) and describes him as tall and handsome, with “dark auburn hair and fine dark eyes.”