The novel opens with narrator Richard Papen, dissatisfied with his ordinary California upbringing, arriving at an elite Vermont college and becoming fascinated with an exclusive, insular group of classics students studying under the charismatic, unconventional professor Julian Morrow.

Key elements established in the opening:

• The novel's opening pages reveal, unusually, that the group will murder one of their own — turning the story into a "whydunit" focused on motive and psychology rather than a traditional mystery about who committed the crime
• Richard's outsider status and eagerness to be accepted by this glamorous, exclusive group establishes the social dynamics of insecurity and belonging that drive much of his behavior throughout the novel
• Julian Morrow's unconventional, intensely aesthetic approach to teaching classics — prioritizing beauty and philosophical intensity over conventional academic structure — cultivates the group's later dangerous excesses

This opening establishes both the novel's unusual structure (revealing the murder upfront) and the seductive, insular social world that makes the coming tragedy psychologically plausible.