Based on Philip Roth's late novel, Indignation takes place in 1951, as Marcus Messner (Logan Lerman), a brilliant working-class Jewish boy from Newark, New Jersey, travels on scholarship to a small, conservative college in Ohio, thus exempting him from being drafted into the Korean War. But once there, Marcus's growing infatuation with his beautiful classmate Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), and his clashes with the college's imposing Dean, Hawes Caudwell (Tracy Letts), put his and his family's best-laid plans to the ultimate test.