29 pages • 58 minutes read
Nikolai GogolThe Nose
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1836A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Satire
The inability of Kovalyov to see the error of his ways is the central gag in The Nose on which all the other satirical elements are built. No matter what happens, even when faced with the possibility of this missing piece of himself replacing himself and becoming better than himself, Kovalyov’s primary concern is his own self-interest.
From both Ivan Yakovlevich and Kovalyov’s perspectives, the text induces a strong feeling of anxiety as both are faced with the insurmountable walls put up by society and other people’s own self-interest. Institutions that are supposed to serve the people operate by and large as a marketplace full of red tape. Uniform, rank, and social status are everything in Imperial Russia, if we are to take Gogol’s text and perspective at face value.
Thus, The Nose serves as a great satire on what life was like in St. Petersburg across class lines, with great emphasis on the selflessness of the working poor, as personified by Ivan Yakovlevich, and the self-interest of the upper classes. Gogol highlights this by showcasing Kovalyov’s socially accepted disdain and maltreatment of the working poor.
Personification
The nose, as a character in the story, is at one point able to dress itself, walk, talk, and do everything else a normal human could do. The question of how this is happening is never answered. The mechanics are of little significance here, as the nose himself answers the only question he considers relevant: “I am myself” (211).
Beyond the personification of Kovalyov’s inner higher self, what the nose represents in Gogol’s The Nose is basic human vanity. Kovalyov apparently has lost his nose during a shave. Apparently not in any medical danger by the loss of his nose, his very human reaction is to first worry about how his appearance is going to affect his social status and ability to pick up women. When the Nose is personified as a humble scholar of higher rank, Kovalyov doesn’t see the error of his ways but demands the Nose be made whole to himself. When he at last gets it, it fails to attach on.
No matter what form the Nose takes, Kovalyov does not understand that his pursuit of vanity and materialism is his downfall. By the end of the story, he is an even worse person than before, binging on snuff and pursuing material excess. There is never an explanation for the loss of the nose in the first place beyond the supernatural or drunkenness, so while an absurdist reading could ultimately be applied to The Nose, one might consider the possibility that the story is also Gogol’s portrait of the anxieties of living in the materialist-driven culture of St. Petersburg during 1830s Imperial Russia.
Allegory
The nose could be considered Gogol’s allegory of Imperial Russia as he experienced it in 1830s St. Petersburg. The setting of Gogol’s St. Petersburg is thoroughly mapped out, with every landmark being within an hour’s walk of each other, and the milieu of characters portray a nervous atmosphere of hustling and disparity: newspaper clerks, worshipers in the cathedral, people trying to sell their labor and property, law enforcement, the working class, the ruling class.
Kovalyov, whose nose has gone missing, carries us through the story as he interacts with this world and misses opportunity after opportunity to understand the error of his ways and achieve the true key to success through humility. This, ultimately, is Gogol’s criticism of Imperial Russia as he saw it in St. Petersburg: the working class and serfs are treated maliciously as everyone else is concerned with themselves. If they would but turn to piety, humility, and God (as the personified Nose does in the cathedral), society would improve.
Related Titles
By Nikolai Gogol
