Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov worked on the novel “Oblomov” for ten years. The characterization of the main character is so convincingly presented by the classic that it went beyond the scope of the work, and the image became a household name. The quality of the author's elaboration of the characters in the story is impressive. All of them are integral, possessing the features contemporary writer people.
The topic of this article is the characteristics of the heroes of Oblomov.
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. Sliding on the plane of laziness
The central image of the book is the young (32-33 years old) landowner Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a lazy, imposing dreamer. He is a man of average height, with dark gray eyes, pleasant facial features, and childishly pampered plump hands. The person living in the St. Petersburg apartment on the Vyborg side is ambiguous. Oblomov is an excellent conversationalist. By his nature, he is not capable of causing harm to anyone. His soul is pure. He is educated and has a broad outlook. At any given time, his face reflects a continuous stream of thoughts. It would seem that we are talking about if not for the enormous laziness that has taken possession of Ilya Ilyich. Since childhood, numerous nannies took care of him in small ways. “Zakharki da Vanya” from the serfs did any work for him, even small ones. His days pass in idleness and lying on the sofa.
Trusting them, Oblomov signed an enslaving agreement for his Vyborg apartment, and then paid fake “moral damages” to Agafya’s brother Mukhoyarov in the amount of ten thousand rubles through a fake loan letter. Ilya Ilyich's friend Stolz exposes the scoundrels. After this, Tarantiev “goes on the run.”
People close to Oblomov
Those around him feel that he is a sincere person, Oblomov. The characterization is a characterization, but the protagonist’s self-destruction through laziness does not prevent him from having friends. The reader sees how true friend Andrei Stolts is trying to snatch Oblomov from the tight embrace of doing nothing. After Oblomov’s death, he became, according to the latter’s will, an adoptive father for his son Andryusha.
Oblomov has a devoted and loving common-law wife - the widow Agafya Pshenitsyna - an unrivaled housewife, narrow-minded, illiterate, but honest and decent. Outwardly she is plump, but well-behaved and hard-working. Ilya Ilyich admires it, comparing it to a cheesecake. The woman breaks off all relations with her brother Ivan Mukhoyarov, having learned about his low deception of her husband. After death common-law husband the woman feels that “the soul has been taken out of her.” Having given her son to be raised by the Stolts, Agafya simply wants to follow her Ilya. She is not interested in money, as can be seen from her refusal of the income due from Oblomov’s estate.
Ilya Ilyich is served by Zakhar - an unkempt, lazy, but idolizing his master and a loyal servant of the old school to the end. After the master's death, the former servant prefers to beg, but remains near his grave.
More about the image of Andrei Stolts
Often the theme school essays is Oblomov and Stolz. They are opposite even in appearance. Tawny, dark, with sunken cheeks, it seems that Stolz consists entirely of muscles and tendons. He has a rank behind him and a guaranteed income. Later, while working in a trading company, he earned money to buy a house. He shows activity and creativity, he is offered interesting and lucrative work. In the second part of the novel, it is he who tries to bring Oblomov together with Olga Ilyinskaya, introducing them. However, Oblomov stopped building a relationship with this lady because he was afraid to change housing and engage in active work. Disappointed Olga, who planned to re-educate the lazy man, left him. However, Stolz’s image is not ideal, despite his constant creative work. He, as the opposite of Oblomov, is afraid to dream. Goncharov put an abundance of rationality and rationalism into this image. The writer believed that he had not finalized the image of Stolz. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov even considered this image negative, the judgment that he was “too pleased with himself” and “thinks too well of himself.”
Olga Ilyinskaya - woman of the future
The image of Olga Ilyinskaya is strong, complete, beautiful. Not a beauty, but surprisingly harmonious and dynamic. She is deeply spiritual and at the same time active. met her singing the aria "Casta diva". This woman turned out to be capable of stirring up even such a guy. But re-educating Oblomov turned out to be an extremely difficult task, no more effective than training woodpeckers; laziness took deep roots in him. In the end, Oblomov is the first to give up his relationship with Olga (due to laziness). A characteristic of their further relationship is Olga’s active sympathy. She marries the active, reliable and faithful Andrei Stolz, who loves her. They have a wonderful, harmonious family. But the astute reader will understand that the active German “does not reach” the spiritual level of his wife.
Conclusion
A string of Goncharov’s images passes before the eyes of the reader of the novel. Of course, the most striking of them is the image of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. Having wonderful prerequisites for a successful, comfortable life, he managed to ruin himself. At the end of his life, the landowner realized what had happened to him, giving this phenomenon the capacious, laconic name “Oblomovism.” Is it modern? Yes, yes. Today's Ilya Ilyichs, in addition to their dream flight, also have impressive resources - computer games with stunning graphics.
The novel did not reveal the image of Andrei Stolts to the extent intended by Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov. The author of the article considers this to be natural. After all, the classic depicted two extremes in these heroes. The first is a useless dream, and the second is a pragmatic, unspiritual activity. It is obvious that only by combining these qualities in the right proportion will we get something harmonious.
Agafya Pshenitsyna
Agafya Matveevna Pshenitsyna is the widow of an official, Oblomov’s illegitimate wife. “She was about 30 years old. She was very white and plump in face. She had almost no eyebrows at all... Her eyes were grayish-simple, like her entire facial expression; the hands are white, but hard, with large knots of blue veins protruding outward.”
Before Oblomov, P. lived without thinking about anything. She was completely uneducated, even stupid. She was not interested in anything other than running the house. But in this she achieved perfection.
P. was in constant motion, realizing that “there is always work.” It was work that was the content and meaning of this heroine’s life. In many ways, it was P.’s activity that captivated Oblomov.
Gradually, with Oblomov settling in her house, important changes occur in P.’s nature. Anxieties, glimpses of reflection, and finally love awaken in her. Her heroine manifests herself in her own way, taking care of Oblomov’s clothes and table, praying for his health, and caring for the hero at night during his illness. “Her entire household... received a new, living meaning: the peace and comfort of Ilya Ilyich... She began to live in her own full and varied way.” P. is the only absolutely unselfish and decisive person around Oblomov. For his sake, she is ready to do anything: pawn jewelry, borrow money from her late husband’s relatives. When P. finds out about the machinations of her “brother” and godfather against Oblomov, she does not hesitate to break off all relations with them. P. and Oblomov have a son. Understanding his difference from the rest of his children, P., after Oblomov’s death, meekly gives him up to Stoltz to be raised. Having become a widow, P. realized that she had a meaning in life, she “knew why she lived and that she did not live in vain.” At the end of the novel, P.’s selflessness is manifested with renewed vigor: she does not need reports from Oblomov’s estate and income from it. The light of P.'s life faded along with Oblomov's life.
Zakhar
Zakhar is Oblomov's servant. This " old man, in a gray frock coat, with a hole under the arm... with a skull as bare as a knee and with immensely wide thick brown and gray sideburns..."
Z. is lazy and sloppy. Everything Z. touches breaks and breaks. He can serve food to Oblomov on dirty or broken dishes, he can serve food picked up from the floor, etc. He justifies this philosophically: everything that is done is pleasing to the Lord, and there is no point in fighting it. But Z.’s external looseness is deceptive. He cares about his master's goods and knows them inside out. Despite Tarantiev’s pressure, Z. does not give him any of the master’s clothes, confident that he will not return them. Z. is a servant of the old school, idolizing his master and his entire family. When Oblomov scolds the servant for likening him to other people living in the world, Z. feels guilty. Indeed, his master is special and the best. But, along with devotion to the owner, Z. is characterized by sophistication and depravity of morals. He loves to drink with friends, gossip with other servants, sometimes praising and then belittling his master. On occasion, Z. can pocket money for himself, change from a store, for example. Z.'s life is closely connected with Oblomov's life. The last two representatives of Oblomovka, each in their own way, sacredly keep her covenants in their souls. Even when Z. marries the cook Anisya, he tries not to allow her to see the master, but does everything for him himself, considering it his inviolable duty. Z.'s life ends with Oblomov's life. After his death, Z. is forced to leave Pshenitsyna’s house. He ends his life on the porch as a poor old man. This is how Stolz meets him and offers to take him to the village. But the faithful servant refuses: he cannot leave his master’s grave unattended.
Mikhei Tarantiev
Tarantyev Mikhey Andreevich is Oblomov’s fellow countryman. Where he came from and how he gained the trust of Ilya Ilyich is unknown. T. appears on the very first pages of the novel - “a man of about forty, belonging to a large breed, tall, voluminous in the shoulders and throughout the body, with large facial features, with a large head, with a strong, short neck, with large protruding eyes, thick lips . A quick glance at this man gave rise to the idea of something rude and unkempt.”
This type of bribe-taking official, a brute, ready to scold everyone in the world every minute, but at the last minute cowardly hiding from well-deserved reprisal, was not discovered in literature by Goncharov. It became widespread precisely after Goncharov, in the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A. V. Sukhovo-Kobylin. T. is that “coming Ham” who gradually reigned throughout Russia and who grew into a formidable symbol in the image of Sukhovo-Kobylin’s Rasplyuev.
But T. has one more interesting feature. “The fact is that Tarantiev was a master only of talking; in words he decided everything clearly and easily, especially with regard to others; but as soon as it was necessary to move a finger, to get under way - in a word, to apply the theory he had created to the case and give it a practical move... he was a completely different person: here he was missing... "This trait, as is known, characterizes not only the rude and uncouth characters of the named writers, but to some extent " extra people" Like T., they also remained “theoreticians for life,” applying their abstract philosophy to places and places out of place. Such a theorist needs a number of practices that could bring his plans to life. T. finds himself a “godfather”, Ivan Matveevich Mukhoyarov, a morally unscrupulous man, ready for any meanness, who does not disdain anything in his thirst for accumulation.
At first, Oblomov believes that T. is able to help him with worries about the estate and in changing his apartment. Gradually, not without the influence of Olga Ilyinskaya and Andrei Stolts, Ilya Ilyich begins to understand what quagmire T. is trying to drag him into, slowly forcing Oblomov to sink to the very bottom of life. T.’s attitude towards Stolz is not so much the contempt of a Russian for a German, with whom T. rather hides behind him, but rather the fear of exposing the grandiose frauds that T. hopes to carry through to the end. It is important for him, with the help of trusted persons, to get his hands on Oblomovka, receiving interest from Ilya Ilyich’s income, and to confuse him himself properly by obtaining evidence of Oblomov’s connection with Pshenitsyna.
T. hates Stolz, calling him a “sleazy beast.” Out of fear that Stolz will nevertheless take Oblomov abroad or to Oblomovka, T., with the assistance of Mukhoyarov, is in a hurry to force Ilya Ilyich to sign a predatory contract for an apartment on the Vyborg side. This contract deprives Oblomov of the possibility of any action. Following this, T. persuades Mukhoyarov, “before there are no more boobies in Rus',” to marry Oblomov to a new manager of the estate, Isaiah Fomich Zatertoy, who is very successful in bribes and forgeries. T.’s next step is to put into practice (with the help of the same Mukhoyarov) the idea of Oblomov’s “debt”. As if offended by his sister’s honor, Mukhoyarov should accuse Ilya Ilyich of laying claim to the widow Pshenitsyna and sign a document for compensation for moral damage in the amount of ten thousand rubles. The paper is then rewritten in the name of Mukhoyarov, and the godfathers receive money from Oblomov.
After Stolz exposes these frauds, T. disappears from the pages of the novel. Only at the very end is he mentioned by Zakhar, who, when meeting Stolz near the cemetery on the Vyborg side, tells how much he had to endure after the death of Ilya Ilyich from Mukhoyarov and T., who wanted to exterminate him from the world. “Mikhei Andreich Tarantyev kept striving to kick you from behind as soon as you passed by: life was gone!” In this way, T. took revenge on Zakhar for the neglect shown by the servant in those times when T. came to Oblomov for lunch and asked for a shirt, a vest, or a tailcoat - naturally, without return. Every time Zakhar stood up to defend his master’s goods, growling like a dog at the uninvited guest and not hiding his feelings for the low man.
Oblomov
This is how the Main Character appears to the reader at the very beginning of the novel: “He was a man about thirty-two or three years old, of average height, pleasant appearance, with dark gray eyes, but with the absence of any definite idea, any concentration in his facial features... His movements even when he was alarmed, he was also restrained by gentleness and laziness, not without a kind of grace. All anxiety was resolved with a sigh and died away in apathy or dormancy. Ilya Ilyich’s lying down was not... a necessity... it was his normal state.” Home suit Oblomov’s oriental robe, as well as the life of Ilya Ilyich described in detail by the author, complement the image of the hero and help to better understand his character. “On the walls, near the paintings, cobwebs, saturated with dust, were molded in the form of festoons; mirrors, instead of reflecting objects, could rather serve as tablets for writing down some notes on them in the dust for memory.”
A far from impartial character appears before us; it seems that laziness, passivity, and indifference are deeply rooted in him. But at the same time, against the background of his “friends”, deceitful, selfish, boastful people who paid him a visit at the very beginning of the novel, the reader gets to know positive qualities Oblomov: purity of thoughts, honesty, kindness, cordiality.
To more fully reveal Oblomov’s character, Goncharov contrasts him with other heroes of the novel, Andrei Stoltz and Olga Ilyinskaya.
Stolz is certainly the antipode of Oblomov. Every trait of his character is a sharp protest against the qualities of Ilya Ilyich. Stolz loves life - Oblomov often falls into apathy; Stolz has a thirst for activity - for Oblomov, the best activity is relaxing on the couch. The origins of this opposition are in the education of heroes.
The author makes you involuntarily compare the childhood of little Andrei with the childhood of Ilyusha. Unlike Stolz, who grew up under the tutelage of his father, independent, persistent in achieving his goals, thrifty, main character grew up as a child accustomed to having all his desires satisfied not as a result of his own efforts, but from the hard work of others. The village where Oblomov was brought up was, according to Dobrolyubov, the soil on which Oblomovism grew. Such an upbringing developed apathetic immobility in Ilya Ilyich and plunged him into the pitiful state of a moral slave. This is one of Oblomov’s tragedies touched upon in the novel - the young and active Ilyusha was infected from childhood with an “incurable disease”, Oblomovism - laziness generated by fear of change and fear of the future.
Stolz, in whom the author has infused the power capable of reviving the Oblomovs and destroying Oblomovism, considers it his duty to change his friend’s way of life.
Oblomovism is a state of mind characterized by personal stagnation and apathy. This word comes from the name of the main character of the famous novel by Goncharov. Throughout almost the entire narrative, Ilya Oblomov remains in a similar state. And, despite the efforts of his friend, his life ends tragically.
Roman Goncharova
This work is iconic in literature. The novel is dedicated to a state characteristic of Russian society, which at first glance may seem to be nothing more than an extreme degree of laziness. However, the meaning of the word “Oblomovism” is deeper.
Critics called the work the pinnacle of I. A. Goncharov’s creativity. The novel clearly expresses its problems. The writer achieved in it clarity of style and completeness of composition. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is one of the brightest characters in Russian literature of the nineteenth century.
The image of the main character
Ilya Oblomov comes from a family of landowners. His way of life became a distorted reflection of Domostroevsky norms. Oblomov spent his childhood and youth on the estate, where life was extremely monotonous. But the hero absorbed the values of his parents, if one can, of course, use this word to call a way of life in which special attention gives in to sleep and long meals. And yet, the personality of Ilya Ilyich was formed precisely in such an atmosphere, which predetermined his fate.
The author characterizes his hero as an apathetic, withdrawn and dreamy man of thirty-two years old. Ilya Oblomov has a pleasant appearance, dark gray eyes, which lack any idea. His face lacks concentration. The characterization of Ilya Oblomov was given by Goncharov at the beginning of the novel. But as the story progresses, the hero reveals other traits: he is kind, honest, selfless. But the main feature of this character, unique in literature, is traditional Russian daydreaming.
Dreams
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov loves to dream above all else. His idea of happiness is somewhat utopian in nature. As a child, Ilya was surrounded by care and love. Peace and harmony reigned in the parental home. A loving nanny told him every evening colorful stories about beautiful sorceresses and miracles that could make a person happy instantly, once and for all. And there is no need to make any effort. A fairy tale can come true. You just have to believe.
Ilya Oblomov remembers his native estate so often, reclining on his sofa in a greasy, unchanging robe, that he begins to dream about the atmosphere of his native home. And there is nothing sweeter than these dreams. However, from time to time something brings him back to the gray, unsightly reality.
Oblomov and Stolz
As an antipode to the Russian dreamer from a landowner family, the author introduced into the work the image of a man of German origin. Stolz has no inclination for idle thoughts. He is a man of action. The meaning of his life is work. Promoting his ideas, Stolz criticizes Ilya Oblomov’s lifestyle.
These people have known each other since childhood. But when the son of the owner of Oblomovka, accustomed to the slow, unhurried rhythm of life, arrived in St. Petersburg, he was unable to adapt to life in the big city. The service in the office did not go well, and he found nothing better than to lie down on the sofa for many months and indulge in dreams. Stolz, on the contrary, is a man of action. He is not characterized by careerism, laziness, or negligence in relation to his work. But at the end of the novel, this hero still admits that his work does not have any high goals.
Olga Ilyinskaya
This heroine managed to “lift” Oblomov from the couch. Having met and fallen in love with her, he began to get up early in the morning. There was no longer any chronic drowsiness on my face. Apathy left Oblomov. Ilya Ilyich began to feel embarrassed about his old robe, hiding it away, out of sight.
Olga felt some sympathy for Oblomov, calling him a “heart of gold.” Ilya Ilyich had an extremely developed imagination, as evidenced by his colorful sofa fantasies. This quality is not bad. Its owner is always an interesting conversationalist. So was Ilya Oblomov. He was quite pleasant in conversation, despite the fact that he did not know the latest St. Petersburg gossip and news. But in actively caring for this man, Ilyinskaya was seduced by something else, namely, the desire to assert herself. She was a young lady, although very active. And the ability to influence a person older than her, to change his way of life and thoughts, incredibly inspired the girl.
The relationship between Oblomov and Ilyinskaya could not have a future. He needed the quiet, calm care that he received as a child. What frightened her was his indecision.
Oblomov's tragedy
Oblomov grew up in greenhouse conditions. In childhood, he may have shown childish playfulness, but excessive care on the part of his parents and nanny suppressed the manifestation of any activity. Ilyusha was protected from danger. And it turned out that although he grew up kind person, but deprived of the ability to fight, set a goal, and even more so achieve it.
At the service he was unpleasantly surprised. The bureaucratic world had nothing in common with Oblomov's paradise. Here it was every man for himself. And infantility and inability to exist in real life led to the fact that the slightest obstacle was perceived by Oblomov as a disaster. The service became unpleasant and difficult for him. He left her and went to his wonderful world of dreams and dreams.
The life of Ilya Oblomov is a consequence of unrealized potential and the gradual degradation of personality.
Goncharov's hero in real life
The image of Ilya Oblomov is collective. There are many people in Russia who cannot adapt to changing social and economic conditions. And especially many Oblomovs appear when the old way of life collapses. It becomes easier for such people to live in a non-existent world, remembering past times, rather than changing themselves.
Description of the characters in I. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”
Oblomov
Oblomov Ilya Ilyich is the main character of the novel, a young man “about thirty-two or three years old, of average height, pleasant appearance, with dark gray eyes, but with the absence of any definite idea, any concentration in his facial features... there was softness the dominant and basic expression, not only of the face, but of the whole soul; and the soul shone so openly and clearly in the eyes, in the smile, in every movement of the head and hand.” This is how the reader finds the hero at the beginning of the novel, in St. Petersburg, on Gorokhovaya Street, where he lives with his servant Zakhar.
WITH early childhood he saw a similar example among his relatives, who also fenced themselves off from outside world and protected him. It was not customary to work in his home. When he, as a child, played snowballs with peasant children, they then warmed him up for several days. In Oblomovka they were wary of everything new - even a letter that came from a neighbor, in which he asked for a beer recipe, was afraid to open for three days.
But Ilya Ilyich remembers his childhood with joy. He idolizes the nature of Oblomovka, although this is an ordinary village, not particularly remarkable. He was brought up by rural nature. This nature instilled in him poetry and a love of beauty.
Ilya Ilyich does nothing, just complains about something all the time and engages in verbiage. He is lazy, does nothing himself and does not expect anything from others. He accepts life as it is and does not try to change anything in it.
When people come to him and tell him about their lives, he feels that in the bustle of life they forget that they are wasting their lives in vain... And he does not need to fuss, act, does not need to prove anything to anyone. Ilya Ilyich simply lives and enjoys life.
It's hard to imagine him in motion, he looks funny. At rest, lying on the sofa, it is natural. He looks at ease - this is his element, his nature.
Nature, however, showed Oblomov a single goal: life, as it had flowed for centuries in Oblomovka, where they were afraid of news, traditions were strictly observed, books and newspapers were not recognized at all. From “Oblomov’s Dream,” called an “overture” by the author and published much earlier than the novel, as well as from individual strokes scattered throughout the text, the reader learns quite fully about the hero’s childhood and youth, spent among people who understood life “no other than an ideal.” peace and inaction, disturbed from time to time by various unpleasant accidents... they endured labor as a punishment imposed on our forefathers, but they could not love, and where there was an opportunity, they always got rid of it, finding it possible and proper.” Goncharov depicted the tragedy of the Russian character, devoid of romantic traits and not colored by demonic gloom, but nevertheless finding himself on the sidelines of life - through his own fault and through the fault of society, in which there was no place for the Lomovs. Having no predecessors, this type remained unique.
Oblomov's clothes - his robe, "oriental"< ...>, very roomy, so that he could wrap himself in it twice.” The robe becomes a symbol of Ilyusha’s laziness, Stolz and Olga Ilyinskaya strive to pull him out of the robe, but when Oblomov finally gives up, abandons the struggle of life, flees from love for Ilyinskaya into sleep and habitual idleness, the robe again envelops his corpulent body. Another indispensable attribute of Ilya Oblomov’s laziness is the sofa on which he spends all his days from dawn to dusk in daydreaming, half-asleep and sleep. The furnishings of Oblomov’s apartment are evidence of decline, neglect of surrounding things, apathy and lack of will: “On the walls, near the paintings, a cobweb, saturated with dust, was molded in the form of festoons; mirrors, instead of reflecting objects, could serve rather as tablets for writing down on them, in the dust, some notes for memory. The carpets were stained. There was a forgotten towel on the sofa; On rare mornings there was not a plate with a salt shaker and a gnawed bone on the table that had not been cleared away from yesterday’s dinner, and there were no bread crumbs lying around.” Oblomov’s fate is a series of failures, disappointments and defeats in life: in childhood he studied somehow, because he considered teaching “as a punishment sent by heaven for our sins”; after completing his education, “his head represented a complex archive of dead deeds, persons, eras, numbers, religions,” “like a library consisting of only scattered volumes on different parts of knowledge”; Ilya’s service was not a success, since he did not see the point in it and was timid in the presence of his superiors, when one day he accidentally sent the necessary paper instead of Astrakhan to Arkhangelsk, went to bed, and then resigned out of fright; Oblomov did not experience love, because “great troubles lead to rapprochement with women.”
Zakhar
Zakhar is the servant of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. Goncharov dedicated a special essay to this type, entitled “Servants of the Old Century,” in which he recalls well-known representatives of this class, people of the old school, who had difficulty getting used to new living conditions. Zakhara’s literary pedigree comes from Pushkin’s Savelich (“ Captain's daughter"). Despite all the differences in the characters of the first, corrupted by life in St. Petersburg and the pathological laziness of his master, and the second - the eternal uncle, for whom the pet remains a small, unreasonable child almost for the rest of his life, they are brought together by their obsessive loyalty not only to their master, but to everything his family.
3ahar - “an elderly man, in a gray frock coat, with a rip under the arm... in a gray vest, with copper buttons, with a skull as bare as a knee and with immensely wide and thick gray-blond sideburns, of which each would have become three beards... The Oblomov house was once rich and famous in its own right, but then, God knows why, it grew poorer, smaller, and finally, imperceptibly lost among the old noble houses. Only the gray-haired servants of the house kept and passed on to each other the faithful memory of the past, cherishing it as if it were a shrine.”
The portrait of Zakhara, depicting a funny and absurd appearance, is complemented by a special voice: the hero does not speak, but grumbles like a dog, or wheezes. The voice given by God, according to Zakhar, “he lost while hunting with dogs, when he was traveling with an old master and when it seemed like a strong wind blew into his throat.”
Complete indifference to litter, dust, and dirt distinguishes this servant from other servant characters Russian literature. Zakhar has drawn up his own philosophy on this matter, which does not allow one to fight either dirt, cockroaches and bedbugs, since they were invented by the Lord himself. When Oblomov gives his servant the example of the tuner’s family living opposite, Zakhar responds with the following arguments, in which his extraordinary powers of observation are visible: “Where will the Germans take the rubbish? Look how they live! The whole family has been gnawing on the bone for a week. The coat passes from the father's shoulders to the son, and from the son again to the father. My wife and daughters are wearing short dresses: everyone tucks their legs under them like geese... Where can they get dirty laundry? They don’t have it like we do, so that in their closets there’s a bunch of old, worn-out clothes lying around over the years, or a whole corner of bread crusts accumulated over the winter... They don’t even have a crust lying around in vain: they’ll make some crackers and drink it with beer.”
The main character of the novel is a pleasant-looking nobleman, 32-33 years old, with no definite goal in life. Oblomov has dark gray eyes and a soft gaze, and his facial features lack any concentration. The main meaning of the novel is connected with the image of Oblomov. It would seem that there is nothing important in this story, but it reflects Russian life and the reality of the mid-19th century.
One of the main characters in the book, his complete opposite, is a business man with an active lifestyle. His father is a Russified German who manages an estate near Oblomovka, and his mother is a Russian noblewoman. While the mother tried to raise her son as a decent, noble and well-mannered young man, the father instilled willpower, toughness, the ability to stand up for himself and cope with emerging difficulties.
One of the main heroines of the novel, Oblomov’s beloved, is a bright and strong character. Ilyinskaya was not distinguished by her beauty, but she was quite graceful and harmonious. She had a sincere simplicity and naturalness that was rare. Nothing pretentious, no tinsel. The girl was orphaned early and lived in the house of her aunt, Marya Mikhailovna. It is unclear where and when Stolz met her, but it was he who decided to introduce Olga to his friend Oblomov.
One of minor characters in the novel, Oblomov’s devoted servant. This is an elderly man in a gray frock coat with a bald head and light brown sideburns. By nature, Zakhar is quite lazy and sloppy. He can serve the owner food in dirty dishes and even pick up food that has fallen on the floor and serve it on the table. He treats everything philosophically, saying that everything that is done pleases God.
A minor character who appeared from the first pages of the novel “Oblomov”, a fellow countryman of the main character, who managed to gain his trust for a while. Outwardly, he resembles a rude and unkempt bribe-taking official, of which there were many at that time. He is large and voluminous in the shoulders, looks 40 years old, has a large head and short neck, thick lips and bulging eyes.
A minor character, the widow of an official with two children, later Oblomov’s illegitimate wife. She was Mukhoyarov’s sister and Tarantiev’s godfather. The latter settled Oblomov, who was forced to look for a home, in Pshenitsyna’s house on the Vyborg side. Outwardly, Agafya Matveevna was not attractive.
A minor character, a social dandy, one of the guests in Oblomov’s house. This is a young man of about twenty-five, bursting with health with laughing eyes and lips. His life consists of endless visits to St. Petersburg houses, as well as all kinds of entertainment. Oblomov himself considers such a pastime empty and worthless.
Mukhoyarov
Minor character brother Agafya Pshenitsyna, godfather of Mikhei Tarantiev. He is about 40 years old, works in an office, but is illiterate. Gives the impression of a quiet and meek person. He carries out several scams against Oblomov, but thanks to the intervention of Stolz, they were not completed, and he was kicked out of service.
Worn out
An occasional character, a friend of Mukhoyarov, a swindler. He was appointed manager of Oblomov’s estate, where he stole almost all the money and shared it with Mukhoyarov. When Stolz found out about this, he kicked him out of the estate.
