All her life Therese Raquin has oppressed her passion and liveliness for bright things. Tending to her sick cousin, Camille, has put her needs and wants on the back burner with her aunt insisting on making her son the family's first priority. This state of being where one just exists for the sake of existing becomes Therese's status quo for years to come. She marries her cousin for it offers secure future and moves to Paris when her husband gets tired of country life. 
 When Laurent enters Raquin household, the family is smitten. He is an attentive friend, a gentleman and has an attractive disposition about him. Its the first time Therese sees a man of considerable young age and single at such close proximity. This has her eyes chasing after her husband's new best friend and poking the sleeping dragon that is her passion. The bottled up passion bursts out like lava when Laurent makes a move on her. Their combined passion is graceless, violent and almost animal like. Therese thrives in this affair. She recovers a part of her that she believed she has lost and finds life in Laurent's arms. This hide and seek affair isn't enough for them and that is what drives them to make their combined first poor life decision. Kill Camille. 
 This decision is an expose on Laurent's character with his obsession for an easy life without having to bend his back to earn his keep. They could have eloped which would have been an easy thing to do. But Laurent finds it easier to eliminate Camille and take his position - as a husband and as a son to Camille's mother. He likes the small place in the dark alley, finding solace in its dingy lit apartment and dusty street. What he doesn't anticipate is the guilt that follows him and Therese once they complete the task of killing Camille. 
 Much part of the novel is the guilt that comes after the crime. Their guilt becomes their punishment; Camille exists between them even after he is dead by simply existing in their memories. Their guilt turn into their own personal horrific hell and the couple cannot come to enjoy the freedom even after they get together officially. Zola's setting has to be lauded as the shadows and darkness adds to the horror of their minds as much as Camille's memory does. The guilt eats at them lashing at one another at every turn, turning them into vicious animals with biting words and irresponsible actions. It doesn't do much when Mother Raquin gets paralyzed. 
 Therese nurses her mother-in-law in an act of guilt and not of love. She confesses her sin to her as a means for peace but it doesn't do much given the state that she and Laurent are in. What she once loved about him turns rancid and the attraction she had for him turns to disgust. Their paths wander as they carry on with their lives desperately obfuscating their wrong-doings by continuously displaying anger and bitter words at each other. He has an affair on the side and she finds new friends. The only escape they see from this horrible nightmare that has stretched too long, is for the other to die. And they decide independently to kill the other on that particular day. 
 The ending these two get shouldn't be heartbreaking but it is. One wants to poison and the other wants to use the blade. Its ironic how Laurent goes for poison for poison is the choice of weapon a woman would generally use while a blade is a man's choice. It only goes to show how Zola shakes up the narrative by making his characters as uncommon as possible. The end is inevitable for this doomed romance as they die at the very place they met for the first time. The irony is magnificient in its simplicity. 
 Zola sets up the story in a gloomy place as if its the only place where a torrid love affair can take place. General mood of the story is dark - be it the house they live in, the road that leads to the house and the psychology of the characters themselves. Even the weather is found to be gloomy whenever Zola makes a note of it except for the day when Camille dies when autumn is close to an end paving way for long dreary winter. Zola packs every tool known to him to make the scenes claustrophobic and stuffy. He doesn't hold back when he delves into darkness of the minds and explores the extent of damage, guilt can impose. 
 Its entirely satsifying in the way a setting such as this promises. Zola nails it.