There is a crustacean called a hermit crab that lives its entire life hiding from the world in a seashell… This is the way Ilya Ilyich Oblomov exists among other human beings…

He was a man of about thirty-two or three, of medium height and pleasant appearance, with dark grey eyes, but with a total absence of any definite idea, any concentration, in his features. Thoughts promenaded freely all over his face, fluttered about in his eyes, reposed on his half-parted lips, concealed themselves in the furrows of his brow, and then vanished completely – and it was at such moments that an expression of serene unconcern spread all over his face. This unconcern passed from his face into the contours of his body and even into the folds of his dressing-gown.

Inertia of the mind and fear of everything new don’t allow the hero to do anything or take any however small step forward… He is locked in a prison of his apathy, ennui and listlessness so lethargy is the way of his living from day to day…

‘Writes articles at night,’ Oblomov mused. ‘When does he sleep? And yet he probably earns five thousand a year. It’s his bread and butter. But to keep on writing, wasting his mind and soul on trifles, to change his convictions, sell his intelligence and imagination, do violence to his nature, be in a perpetual state of excitement and turmoil, knowing no rest, always rushing about… And write and write, like a wheel or a machine – write to-morrow, write the day after – the holidays, summer will come – always writing, writing! When is he to stop and have a rest? Poor wretch!’

But the novel is much wider than just a portrayal of the main hero – Ivan Goncharov paints the whole gallery of the vivid characters that constitute the human fauna surrounding Oblomov.
When he meets a young intelligent girl, Oblomov seems to wake from his hibernation and he starts changing his ways of life but all in vain – inertness doesn’t let him go and he is pushed back into the mire of his inactivity for good.

‘Don’t talk rubbish! Man has been created to arrange his own life and even to change his own nature, and you’ve grown a big belly and think that nature has sent you this burden! You had wings once, but you took them off.’

Tranquility… Sometimes a snail or a slug would crawl across a green leaf and after it nothing would be left except a slightly glimmering trail of mucus.
If the meek inherit the earth, the world will be lying in ruins…