Essay: Simplicity and complexity of Oblomov’s character (based on Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”)
(420 words) Ilya Ilyich Oblomov - the main character of the novel by I. A. Goncharov - is a person who seems to be simple and understandable. What can the reader say about him? He is bored by everything, nothing interests him. He doesn’t like to work and doesn’t care about his native estate. Even the servant will contradict Ilya Ilyich. However, the hero is kind-hearted and honest. Oblomov is a sympathetic and loyal friend. He feels the beauty of nature, deeply experiences a reverent, living feeling of heartfelt affection for Olga.
It seems that the character of the hero is simple. It seems that there is no serious internal contradiction or insoluble conflict in him. All the failures of Ilya Ilyich, his deadened existence can easily be explained by his effeminacy and laziness. However, is the image presented by the writer so unambiguous? What exactly is Oblomovism?
It is impossible to understand the hero without turning to his origin, childhood, family. Oblomov is a local nobleman with three hundred peasant souls. He was brought up in the village, among the vast expanses of his native land, under its free sky. Since childhood, Ilya Ilyich responded with all his heart to the beauty of nature, felt its mood, became close to it. He also became accustomed to the leisurely life of his home, where after dinner everyone fell into a half-dead sleep, where meals and preparations for holidays took up most of the day, and the precious boy Ilya was the subject of adoration and care for every resident of the house. Ilya received a good upbringing, he is not stupid, but he is spoiled and capricious. He lived almost as a child until he was thirty-two years old.
In the image of Oblomov, Goncharov showed the slow decline of several generations of Russian nobles with their carefree life, the well-being of which was built on the labor of forced peasants. But neither Oblomov nor those like him can be called oppressors, cruel exploiters, greedy for benefits. Living by inertia, following old habits, Oblomov cannot find a place for himself in the new world, which is constantly changing and sets new rules of existence, for which people like Ilya Ilyich are unsuitable. At the same time, the hero himself understands his position, which significantly complicates his image.
The reader will think what would be easier - for Oblomov to change his lifestyle, habits, and engage in active activities. But even in love, the hero retreats. Humbling his warm heart, he prefers warm, filial-maternal tenderness to a complex, contradictory feeling.
However, Olga did not accept Oblomov either. The girl sought to change the man, subjugate him to her will, test her strength and charm, turning Ilya Ilyich almost into a student - not a lover. Olga chooses Stolz, the antipode of Oblomov, a man of a new formation, ambitious, active, but, it seems, a little callous.
Following Olga, the writer, it seems, refuses to give Oblomov a second chance, asserting the inevitability of the extinction of all noble Russia. However, the spontaneity and amazing purity of the hero’s “crystal” soul captivate both readers and the author. Oblomov’s “doveish tenderness” continues to live in his son, in the memories of friends, in the native landscape of the Russian land, in the Russian character itself - neither simple nor complex, but unique and inimitable.
Author: Ekaterina Ozarovskaya
The completeness and complexity of Oblomov’s character
In the light of the diametrically opposed interpretations of Oblomov and Oblomovism, let us take a closer look at the text of the very complex and multi-layered content of Goncharov’s novel, in which the phenomena of life “revolve from all sides.”
The first part of the novel is dedicated to one ordinary day in the life of Ilya Ilyich. This life is limited to the confines of one room in which Oblomov lies and sleeps. Externally, very little happens here. But the picture is full of movement. Firstly, the hero’s state of mind is constantly changing, the comic merges with the tragic, carelessness with internal torment and struggle, sleep and apathy with the awakening and play of feelings. Secondly, Goncharov, with plastic virtuosity, guesses in the household items surrounding Oblomov the character of their owner. Here he follows in the footsteps of Gogol. The author describes Oblomov's office in detail. All things show abandonment, traces of desolation: last year’s newspaper is lying around, there is a layer of dust on the mirrors, if someone decided to dip a pen into an inkwell, a fly would fly out of it. The character of Ilya Ilyich is guessed even through his shoes, long, soft and wide. When the owner, without looking, lowered his feet from the bed to the floor, he certainly fell into them immediately. When in the second part of the novel Andrei Stolts tries to awaken the hero to an active life, confusion reigns in Oblomov’s soul, and the author conveys this through his discord with familiar things. “Now or never!”, “To be or not to be!” Oblomov started to get up from his chair, but didn’t immediately hit his shoe with his foot and sat down again.” The image of the robe in the novel and the whole story of Ilya Ilyich’s relationship to it are also symbolic. Oblomov’s robe is special, oriental, “without the slightest hint of Europe.” He, like an obedient slave, obeys the slightest movement of his master’s body. When love for Olga Ilyinskaya temporarily awakens the hero to an active life, his determination is associated with the robe: “This means,” Oblomov thinks, “suddenly throwing off the wide robe not only from his shoulders, but also from his soul, from his mind...” But at the moment of sunset love, like an ominous omen, the threatening image of a robe flashes in the novel. Oblomov’s new owner, Agafya Matveevna Pshenitsyna, reports that she took the robe out of the closet and is going to wash and clean it. The connection between Oblomov’s inner experiences and the things that belong to him creates a comic effect in the novel. Not anything significant, but shoes and a robe characterize his internal struggle. The hero's long-standing habit of the deceased Oblomov's life is revealed, his attachment to everyday things and dependence on them. But here Goncharov is not original. He picks up and develops Gogol’s technique of reifying man, known to us from “Dead Souls.” Let us recall, for example, the descriptions of the offices of Manilov and Sobakevich. The peculiarity of Goncharov’s hero is that his character is in no way exhausted or limited by this. Along with the everyday environment, the action of the novel includes much broader connections that influence Ilya Ilyich. The very concept of the environment that shapes human character is expanded immensely by Goncharov. Already in the first part of the novel, Oblomov is not only a comic hero: behind the humorous episodes, other, deeply dramatic principles slip through. Goncharov uses the hero’s internal monologues, from which we learn that Oblomov is a living and complex person. He plunges into youthful memories, reproaches for a mediocre life are stirring in him. Oblomov is ashamed of his own lordship, as a person, he rises above him. The hero is faced with a painful question: “Why am I like this?” The answer to it is contained in the famous “Oblomov’s Dream”. The circumstances that influenced the character of Ilya Ilyich in childhood and youth are revealed here. Oblomovka’s living, poetic picture is part of the soul of the hero himself. It includes the Russian nobility, although Oblomovka is far from being limited to nobility. The concept of “Oblomovism” includes the entire patriarchal way of Russian life, not only with its negative, but also with its deeply poetic sides. The broad and gentle character of Ilya Ilyich was influenced by Central Russian nature with the soft outlines of sloping hills, with the slow, leisurely flow of lowland rivers, which either spill into wide ponds, or rush in a fast thread, or crawl slightly over the pebbles, as if lost in thought. This nature, shunning the “wild and grandiose,” promises a person a calm and long-term life and an imperceptible, sleep-like death. Nature here, like an affectionate mother, takes care of the silence and measured tranquility of a person’s entire life. And at the same time, there is a special “mode” of peasant life with a rhythmic sequence of everyday life and holidays. And even thunderstorms are not terrible, but beneficial there: they “occur constantly at the same set time, almost never forgetting Ilya’s day, as if in order to support a well-known tradition among the people.” There are no terrible storms or destruction in that region. The stamp of unhurried restraint also lies on the characters of people nurtured by Russian mother nature. The creations of the people's poetic imagination match nature. “Then Oblomov dreamed of another time: on an endless winter evening he timidly clings to his nanny, and she whispers to him about some unknown side, where there are neither nights nor cold, where miracles happen, where rivers of honey and milk flow, where no one he doesn’t do anything all year round, and all he knows every day is that all the good fellows, such as Ilya Ilyich, and beauties, are walking, no matter what a fairy tale can say or describe with a pen.” Goncharov’s “Oblomovism” includes boundless love and affection, with which Ilya Ilyich has been surrounded and nurtured since childhood. “The mother showered him with passionate kisses,” looked “with greedy, caring eyes to see if his eyes were cloudy, if anything hurt, if he slept peacefully, if he woke up at night, if he tossed about in his sleep, if he had a fever.” . This also includes the poetry of rural solitude, and pictures of generous Russian hospitality with a gigantic pie, and Homeric fun, and the beauty of peasant holidays to the sounds of the balalaika... It is not only slavery and lordship that shape the character of Ilya Ilyich. There is something in him from the fairy-tale Ivanushka, a wise sloth who distrusts everything calculating, active and offensive. Let others fuss, make plans, scurry and jostle, boss and servile others. And he lives calmly and carelessly, like the epic hero Ilya Muromets, he sits for thirty years and three years. So “walking men” come to him in a modern St. Petersburg guise, calling him on a journey across the sea of \u200b\u200blife. And then we suddenly involuntarily feel that our sympathies are on the side of the “lazy” Ilya Ilyich. How does St. Petersburg life tempt Oblomov, where do his friends invite him? The capital's dandy Volkov promises him secular success, the official Sudbinsky - a bureaucratic career, the writer Penkin - vulgar literary denunciation. “I’m stuck, dear friend, up to my ears,” Oblomov complains about the fate of the official Sudbinsky. “And blind, and deaf, and dumb for everything else in the world. But he will come out among the people, over time he will manage his affairs and grab ranks... But how little of a person is needed here: his intelligence, his ashes, his feelings - why is that?” “Where is the man here? What does it crush and crumble into? - Oblomov denounces the emptiness of Volkov’s social vanity. - ... Yes, in ten places in one day - unfortunate!” - he concludes, “turning over on his back and rejoicing that he does not have such empty desires and thoughts, that he does not rush around, but lies here, maintaining his human dignity and his peace.” In the life of business people, Oblomov does not see a field that meets the highest purpose of a person. So isn’t it better to remain an Oblomovite, but retain humanity and kindness of heart, than to be a vain careerist, an active Oblomov, callous and heartless? So Oblomov’s friend Andrei Stolts finally lifted the couch potato from the sofa, and Oblomov for some time indulges in the life into which Stolts plunges headlong. “One day, returning from somewhere late, he especially rebelled against this fuss. - “For whole days,” Oblomov grumbled, putting on a robe, “you don’t take off your boots: your feet itch!” I don’t like this life of yours in St. Petersburg!” - he continued, lying down on the sofa. “Which one do you like?” - asked Stolz. - “Not like here.” - “What exactly didn’t you like here?” - “Everything, the eternal running around, the eternal game of crappy passions, especially greed, interrupting each other’s paths, gossip, gossip, clicking on each other, this looking from head to toe; If you listen to what they are talking about, your head will spin and you will become stupefied. It seems that people look so smart, with such dignity on their faces; All you hear is: “This one was given this, that one got rent.” - “For mercy, for what?” - someone shouts. “This one was played yesterday at the club; he takes three hundred thousand!” Boredom, boredom, boredom!.. Where is the man here? Where is his integrity? Where did he disappear, how did he exchange for every little thing?” Oblomov lies on the sofa not only because as a master he can do nothing, but also because as a person he does not want to live at the expense of his moral dignity. His “doing nothing” is also perceived in the novel as a denial of bureaucracy, secular vanity and bourgeois businessmanship. Oblomov's laziness and inactivity are caused by his sharply negative and rightly skeptical attitude towards the life and interests of modern practically active people.
