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The short story The Nose by Gogol belongs to magical realism and is defined as a satirical short story. In this short story, Gogol tries to reflect cultural and social conditions of Russia and its way of life. The main character of the story, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, is a high official in Petersburg who lost his nose. Much of the satire derives from these oppositions and from the fact that it is impossible to reliably describe the difference between doubles and opposites. The Nose treats the seriousness of life with comicality; the author of the story resorts to such literary tools as modern magical realism and satire in order to explain the reality by means of fantasy and disclose the real essence of the main character.
The events which take place in the story can be regarded as both comical and serious. It seems that there is nothing funny in the fact that a person wakes up without a nose one day; on the contrary, this fact is supposed to evoke compassion. However, Gogol presents everything from a slightly different perspective. Magical realism helps him to intertwine reality with fantasy and present serious events as comic ones, In The Nose, Gogol inverts the typical dynamic of modern magical realism. In magical realism, a supernatural or inexplicable event gives rise to a series of realistic consequences; but the realistic detail of life in St. Petersburg could be satisfactory explained only by reference to fantastic and sur-real stories (Hardy and Stanton 128).
The short story depicts events from life of Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov. One day, his barber, Ivan Yakovlevich, finds a human nose inside his breakfast which his wife has just serviced. At first, he is frightened supposing that this can involve him in a crime. In order to hide unpleasant evidence, Ivan Yakovlevich wraps the nose and sets out to dispose of it. He goes to the river but policemen stop him and prevent his attempt to throw the nose into the river. But Ivan Yakovlevich was more dead than alive. He recognized the nose as that of none other that Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, whom he shaved every Wednesday and Sunday (Gogol 2). The magical element of the story is that Gogol does not tell readers how the nose escapes and why it reappears in Ivan Yakovlevichs plate. The author gives some hints to readers to understand the story conflict and the role of magical elements for the further development of the plot. Maus supposes that In the complex and interesting course of Gogols search for his unique, Gogolian self, there is a natural demarcation of two phases, although they are very intimately interconnected (Maus 76). Maus underlines that The Nose reelects the self and identity of Gogol himself and his world vies. Therefore, the symbol of the story, the nose, has a double meaning: it is used as the mirror-image and as a symbol of Kovalyovs unproductive search.
This complicity between the symbol of nose and power is further suggested by various images of the self that run through the text. The ironical comic tone undermines any pretensions to absolute authority by text, yet does not fully efface an underlying note of seriousness, a note that surfaces most clearly in treatment of the nose, the domination of which can be regarded as a demonstration of Kovalyovs ability to defeat the magical forces. Two sides of Gogols personality are revealed in the first phase of the development of his work as a satirist: his attempt to depict both comic and terrible things. Here his tendency to try to discredit other people does not go beneath the surface (Maus 76).
The satire, with which Gogol presents Kovalyov, helps realize versatility of this character. Gogol describes the owner of the nose, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, as a hopeless young man addressed as Major . One morning, he looks at the mirror for the spot at his nose, but finds that there is no nose on his face. Why, no sir, not only there is no pimple but also the nose itself is gone! (Gogol 40). The uniqueness of this story is that Kovalyov reports to police and tries to give an advertisement about the lost nose and asks citizens to help him in this situation. The satire of Gogols approach certainly enriches the literary qualities of his text, but this very satire implies that the text can be read in multiple ways.
Hardy and Stanton keep to the point that there can be no doubt that the elements of acute satire are inherent in Kovalyov and keep reemerging in various settings of his life. In the course of his treatment of this theme, Gogol deals with many of the issues usually associated with the outer world. For example, devil and magic play a major part, both in the communication between characters that makes sharing of a homogeneous, mind-numbing folk culture possible and in sophisticated information systems that make universal watch a practical reality. The uniqueness and magical elements are that the nose leads a self-regulating existence and refuses to acknowledge any acquaintanceship. The primacy of the eternal (kairos) over the visible and ordinary (chronos) gives Gogols tales an oblique relationship to modern magical realism (Hardy and Stanton 138).
Though The Nose was intended to be a magical story with certain caveats attached, it can clearly be read as a statement, especially in the light of the eventual failure of the Russian officials. The most interesting fact is that neither Kovalyov nor any surgeon can get the nose back on his face. One morning, the nose appears on Kovalyovs face without living any mark or reminder of the previous day. Despite its comic tone, this work of Gogols presents Russia as a satirical society in which subtle manifestations of power keep the populace firmly under control without most of them ever realizing it. This society is imaged most directly in Gogols short story by suggestions that the government has for some time been building a massive system for political incarceration in response to the revolutionary energies of the sixties.
In sum, magical elements and the symbol of the lost nose allow Gogol to unveil the self of the main character and symbolically portray his true nature. Gogol depicts the society as a potential source of power and control, but he also suggests that the rhetoric of social values can be used to further the programs of those in official power. The nose is the main symbol which drives the plot development and helps the author to keep readers in suspense till the end. Gogol uses magical realism and satire as the main literary tools to unveil the main theme and symbolically portray nature and the character of Kovalyov.
Works Cited
Gogol, Nikolay. The Nose. ReadHowYouWant.com, 2006.
Hardy, J.D. and Stanton, L. Magical realism in the Tales of Nikolai Gogol . Janus Head 5.2 (2002): 126-139.
Maus, Derek. The Devils in the Details: The Role of Evil in the Short Fiction of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol and Nathaniel Hawthorne . Papers on Language & Literature 38 (2002): 76.
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