Style[edit]

Narrator[edit]
The narrator of Oblomov appears as a rather traditional third person narrator. In the beginning of the
novel he is largely invisible and lets the characters do the talking. As the novel progresses he comes far
less neutral and actually begins to not only describe the characters but he begins to judge them, like
criticizing Oblomov's family for being overly protective of Ilya as a child, or calling Oblomov's false
friends "parasites."[3] The narrator's strongly developed moralizing tendencies are constantly upset by
an equally strong note of ambivalence that undermines his judgements. The narrator seems to be
someone who may wish he knew the answers but is honest enough to admit that he does not.
Goncharov is eager by the end of the novel to make a distinction between himself and the narrator by
making the narrator an invented character. However, Goncharov chooses to reveal the identity of the
narrator only when the revelation would not affect our reading of the novel. There are many moments
when the narrator reveals himself to be uncharacteristically chatty, digressive, and not entirely "reliable".
[3]

Characterizations and depictions[edit]

Goncharov used a lot of dialogue within his works. Therefore, the characters in Oblomov reveal
themselves primarily through their own speech, with very limited comments by the author. The
"colloquial exchanges here coexist with long passages that characterize the novel's inhabitants more
directly."[3]

Themes[edit]
Stages of life[edit]
Goncharov wrote three novels over the course of his life: Oblomov, A Common Story and The
Precipice. Each novel was based heavily on autobiographical material, focusing on different epochs of
life – specifically, infancy and childhood as influenced by the mother, then the "awakening of
adolescence", and finally adulthood as associated with St. Petersburg, government work, and marriage.
[2] The main characters of all three books share multiple important similarities: their fathers have either
been absent or largely insignificant in their upbringings, they rely heavily on their mothers even past
childhood, and they travel to St. Petersburg during their university years. Goncharov himself lost his
father at the age of seven, and worked in St. Petersburg as a translator after graduating from Moscow
State University. Aduev, the protagonist of A Common Story, also isolates himself from reality and
prefers to live within his imagination much like Oblomov does.[2]
With these thematically linked protagonists, Goncharov envisioned Oblomov as part of a thematic
"trilogy", fitting between his other two novels. Goncharov imagined his novels as different reflections of
a single personality; "they are but one tremendous structure, one mirror reflecting in miniature three
epochs: Old Life, Sleep, and Awakening."[2] Aduev, Oblomov, and Rajskij therefore form "but one
personality in its successive rebirths."[2] Oblomov represents the epoch of "Sleep" in Goncharov's
vision. Yet many literary critics have found Goncharov's vision to be lacking. Belinski and Dobroljubov,
two well-known literary critics who wrote famous reviews of Goncharov's works, failed to recognize a
larger connection between Oblomov and Goncharov's other novels.[2]