The novels central character is tienne Lantier, previously seen in LAssommoir (1877), a young migrant worker who arrives at the forbidding coalmining town of Montsou in the bleak far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior — he befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit. tienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a nave youth;.
