The Nose

Gogol’s vain, self-centered civil servant is emblematic of the moral shortcomings that characterize his rigidly hierarchical, status-obsessed milieu. Unlike more conventional literary protagonists, who often go through a process of moral improvement from which they emerge wiser and more self-aware than they were at the beginning, Kovalyov learns nothing from the bizarre events that befall him. He sees the loss of his nose as an affront to his status, as if sudden, unexplained noselessness is a perfectly acceptable condition for a commoner. When his nose is returned to him, he takes it for granted once again, becoming even more smug and self-satisfied than he was before.

After encountering a personified manifestation of his nose, Kovalyov is thrown into something of an existential crisis—one exacerbated by the difference in apparent rank between his nose and himself: “‘How am I to approach him,’ thought Kovalyov. “It is clear from everything, from his uniform, from his hat, that he is a state councilor. I’m damned if I know how to do it” (210). By placing these markers of rank on the “body” of an ambulatory nose, Gogol creates a juxtaposition that highlights The Absurdity of Social Hierarchy. Kovalyov reads the hat and uniform as incontestable evidence of the wearer’s importance, even as he also realizes that the wearer, in this case, is his own nose. His halting, fragmented speech in this moment, as he argues for his own status and therefore for his right to keep his nose on his face, illustrates the degree to which these events have destabilized his sense of identity.

The Nose’s high-ranking uniform and carriage are the trappings of a future Kovalyov dreams for himself, and the fact that his nose possesses the status he himself can only long for makes a mockery of his ambitions. His quest to get his nose back illustrates the theme of The Individual Versus Society. In losing his nose, Kovalyov has lost his sense of completeness as an individual. To get it back, he must navigate an intransigent social order that suddenly appears arrayed against him. This adventure subjects him to further indignities, all of which ultimately arise from his inability to see through the city’s elaborately bureaucratized power structure.

As Kovalyov goes along on his quest, he navigates a social landscape dominated by Class Divisions in Imperial Russia. He berates working-class people such as his cabbies and his valet, Ivan, for annoying or displeasing him. All the while, his frustration increases as he runs into brick wall after brick wall trying to utilize society’s institutions to his advantage: the police, the press, and even the medical establishment fail him as he tries to track down his nose, and later reattach it, to no avail. Even worse: everyone is trying to make a buck, Kovalyov included. The doctor claims that it would be “quite possible” to reattach the nose, but nonetheless he refuses to do so on the grounds that “it might be the worse for you” (225). He then claims that he never acts out of self-interest, as this would be against the honor of his profession, adding, “It’s true that I charge for my visits, but that is only because I hate to offend by my refusal” (225). Like everyone else in Kovalyov’s world, the doctor must hide his real, self-interested motivations behind a veil of social performance. A moment later, he tries to buy Kovalyov’s nose from him “if you won’t ask too much for it” (225). He works for money, but his relatively elevated social position demands that he pretend to work only for the sake of higher values.

When Kovalyov finally recovers the nose (from the same police officer who confronted Ivan Yakovlevich), much remains unclear: The nose is now just a nose again, not a separate, autonomous person in the uniform of a State Councillor. Whatever occurred to transform the nose from object to subject and back again, it goes unexplained. The narrator anticipates such questions and seems to mock the reader’s desire for answers, presenting instead their own slate of questions whose answers are meaningless, such as “How is it that Kovalyov did not realize that one does not advertise for one’s nose through the newspaper office?” (231).

The police officer’s deferential treatment of Kovalyov—in contrast with his rough and threatening treatment of the barber Ivan Yakovlevich—further illustrates the power of Class Divisions in Imperial Russia. The descriptions of Kovalyov’s appearance make it clear that his nose was not torn or cut from his face, and thus that Ivan Yakovlevich could not have taken Kovalyov’s nose off while shaving him, yet we can assume he was found guilty of the crime and arrested based on what the police officer tells Kovalyov. The police officer profiles and suspects Ivan of wrongdoing because of his working-class status, but treats the unappreciative Kovalyov with reverence, all the while dropping hints that he expects a tip. In Gogol’s St. Petersburg, there is one law for the wealthy and another for everyone else.

The narrator dismisses any question about whether the story’s central events could “really” have happened. Within this fictional world, they did happen, and therefore what matters is what they reveal: a society whose rigid, elaborate class hierarchies are even more absurd than a nose calling itself a State Councillor.