> Lermontov's novel is mainly about one man---Pechorin. Pechorin himself is a complex man, thoroughly an anti-hero, as Lermontov makes clear when he writes that the novel is a portrait "not of a single person" but "of the vices of our whole generation in their ultimate development" (Lermontov 19).
Lermontov has created Pechorin to show not only what is villainous about one man, but what is villainous about a whole society. To Lermontov, Pechorin is a symptom of a sick society. It is a society without direction or purpose, and Pechorin represents that society as he goes about doing whatever he wants to do without concern for the disastrous results of his selfishness.
The conflict in the book is between the character of Pechorin and the society in which he lives, as well as between a man who behaves without morality and the average reader's belief in moral behavior. As the book is presented, there is no real "solution" to this conflic
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