The Ways of the Charitable involves four characters: Mustafa and Hossein who are engineers, a physician named Ahmed, and Muhammad who is a chemistry teacher. They are appointed by a fictional geographic administration of Iran to travel to Damavand mountain for scientific studies and measurement. They encounter a number of spaces and characters on their way—from a mujtahid to a dervish to shoemaker—and these encounters attempt to demonstrate Iran's problems. These problems are political, social, and scientific. Kings live in luxury while the country's infrastructure is crumbling; European cities enjoy wealth and application of sciences while Iranian cities lack them; other nations unite with a spirit of reform and talk at lengths to make their nation a better place while Iranians are silent about their problems, alienated from one another, and set in archaic, ancestral ways; the Qajar ministries are mere imitations without any institutional foundation and government officials are not appointed based on merit; education too is in a poor condition and no books are written for the advancement of sound pedagogy.