In “Plautus: A Memoir,” Oleg is the “ornamental hermit” who owns Plautus for the first few decades of her life. The noble family who lives next door to the Tolstoys hires Oleg when he’s only 30 and forbid him from bathing and from speaking, aside from a single Latin phrase. Over time, Oleg goes mad. Plautus watches Oleg read voraciously about philosophy and history; most of what he reads has something to do with the relationship between tortoises and humans. Plautus decides to abandon Oleg for the Tolstoys when, in his 80s, Oleg becomes obsessed with Christianity, which Plautus believes is unfriendly towards tortoises.
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Oleg Character Timeline in Only the Animals
The timeline below shows where the character Oleg appears in Only the Animals. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Plautus: A Memoir of My Years on Earth and Last Days in Space: Soul of Tortoise (Died 1968, Space)
...wakes from her winter sleep. She decides to run away from her owner, the hermit Oleg, and present herself to the Tolstoy family next door. It takes three months for Plautus...
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As Plautus waits, she regrets leaving Oleg. He lives in a house nestled in the next-door noble family’s gardens. For 50 years,...
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In private, Oleg isn’t so wise. He copes with his solitude by reading and talking to Plautus, but...
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Then, Oleg moves on to the argument that Aesop wasn’t Greek at all and was, instead, an...
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Oleg enters a Far Eastern phase. He uses the tortoise shell for the Chinese art of...
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Then, a few years before Plautus runs away, Oleg discovers Christianity. He takes everything literally, so he’s disturbed to discover that tortoises are unclean...
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...ended up with another hermit, Plautus is fascinated. Alexandra’s “female solitude” is so different from Oleg’s. For the first time, Plautus starts to think of her gender (Oleg believed she was...
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...return whenever she gets the chance. She’s fascinated by solitude after spending her life with Oleg, Alexandra, Virginia, and even George—and space, to her, represents a chance to be truly alone.
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