The plot is expansive and features a large cast of characters, rather than narrowly focusing on individuals, but the two principals are Pierre Jallez, a poet loosely based on Romains,[1][2] and Jean Jerphanion, a teacher who later goes into politics.

[2] Structurally, Men of Good Will is a roman-fleuve—a long work across several volumes with continuation of plot and related characters that may mean it forms a single novel.

[6][9][10][11] Men of Good Will and particularly certain portions of it—Encyclopædia Britannica picks out the victory parade at the end of World War I—are emblematic of Romain's philosophy of unanimism, characterised by an interest in the collective rather than individuals.

Rather than telling the story of a few people, Romains' aim is "to paint a complete picture of our twentieth century civilization, in all its aspects, human and inhuman, social as well as psychological".

[7] This cross-volume inter-cutting presses the reader to take the work as a whole, since plots are not always resolved within single volumes, which therefore cannot be fully understood without reference to the others.

[3][7][12] Other themes of the book include marriage and friendship,[3] the internal deviance of outwardly respectable families, Oedipal issues in father-son relationships (literal and metaphorical), Freemasonry, crime, sexual perversion, and the potential—or lack of it—for goodwill, suitably applied, to avoid collective failures such as wars.

[12] Reviews have particularly noted the strong and rapid characterisation that Romains achieved, giving distinct personalities to each of the huge number of characters involved.

[20] The work as a whole has been variously judged to be a "sprawling masterpiece"[21] and "what began as a magnificent fresco of an entire generation" but degenerated "into a daguerreotype of one embittered, splenetic man".