Correction’s setting is a garret in the middle of an Austrian forest, described by the narrator as the "thought dungeon" in which the main character, Roithamer, will pursue his project of constructing an extraordinary habitation, the Cone, as a present for his beloved sister.

Roithamer is deeply attached to his sister; this does not, however, prevent his provoking her death, which occurs on the very day that she moves into this conic house that he has built for her with formidable effort, in the Kobernausser forest.

The Austrian main character Roithamer, lecturer at Cambridge, after years of paroxysmal projects, builds for his sister, the only person he ever loved, a house in the shape of a cone, right in the geometrically precise middle of the Kobernausser forest.

The symbolism of the cone is ambiguous, as it could represent either a refuge, a mausoleum, a phallic icon, the perfect mathematical centre of existence and thought, etc.)

Bernhard used Ludwig Wittgenstein’s biography to intersperse aspects of Roithamer’s life with similarities and create at times a parallel narration.