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The Nose
Nikolai GogolThe Nose by Nikolai Gogol (1836)"The Nose" is a comic story by Nikolai Gogol, written in 1835–1836 and published in 1836 in The Contemporary, the literary journal founded by Alexander Pushkin.1836 · 19th Century · Short Stories · Russian
Abstract
Background. Gogol wrote this tale while living in the Russian capital and saw it printed in Pushkin's journal. It belongs to his cycle of stories about the city's clerks and officials, people defined by the grade they held in the state service.
Plot. A barber discovers a customer's nose in his breakfast bread and tosses it in the river. Its owner, a status-conscious official, finds his face blank and later meets the nose in the street, splendidly uniformed and refusing to know him. Newspapers, police and a doctor are useless; gossip spreads through the city. Two weeks later the nose reappears on his face overnight, and life goes on as before.
Ideas. The comedy targets the worship of rank, reputation and outward show. Characters respond to the impossible with petty concerns about propriety, and the narrator's refusal to explain anything makes the reader share the confusion. Even the doctor and the police treat a runaway body part as a matter of paperwork, fees and good manners, which sharpens the joke at the expense of officialdom. Kovaloff himself learns nothing: once restored, he is as vain as ever, and that is part of the point.
Reception. It is now counted among the founding works of absurdist fiction. Kafka's Metamorphosis is often compared with it, and Shostakovich made it his first opera. Readers continue to argue over whether the tale is pure nonsense, a dream, or a sly allegory of pride.
Main characters
- Kovaloff: Self-styled 'Major' who loses his nose
- The nose: Now a State Councillor
- Ivan Jakovlevitch: Barber who finds the nose
- Madame Podtotchina: Lady he suspects of witchcraft
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Summary
"The Nose" is a comic story by Nikolai Gogol, written in 1835–1836 and published in 1836 in The Contemporary, the literary journal founded by Alexander Pushkin. It is one of Gogol's Petersburg tales, a group of stories set in the Russian capital that also includes "The Overcoat". On the morning of 25 March a St. Petersburg barber, Ivan Jakovlevitch, cuts open a fresh loaf at breakfast and finds a nose inside it. He recognizes it as the nose of one of his customers, Kovaloff, and his furious wife orders him out of the house with it. After trying in vain to lose it in the street, he drops it from a bridge into the river, only to be called over by a police officer. That same morning Kovaloff, a vain official of middle rank who likes to be called "Major", wakes to find a smooth, flat space where his nose should be. Hurrying through the streets with a handkerchief over his face, he sees his own nose step out of a carriage dressed as a State Councillor, a rank far above his own. When he timidly approaches it, the nose coolly insists that it is a person in its own right and turns away. Kovaloff tries to place a newspaper advertisement for his lost nose and to get help from a police commissary, but no one will take his problem seriously, and rumors of a nose strolling about the city draw crowds of the curious. Eventually a police officer returns the nose, caught as it was getting into a coach for Riga with a passport made out in an official's name, but it will not stay on Kovaloff's face, and a doctor declines to reattach it. Then, on 7 April, Kovaloff wakes to find it back in place as though nothing had happened, and he resumes his strutting walks along the Nevsky Avenue. The narrator closes by admitting that a good deal of the story looks improbable, then insists that such things do happen, now and then. Under its absurd surface, the story mocks a society obsessed with rank, appearance and reputation, in which a man without a nose fears above all for his career and his prospects of marriage. Its blend of fantasy and everyday detail made it a forerunner of later absurdist fiction, and Shostakovich turned it into an opera in 1930.
Plot or Argument
- The loaf (Part I)
The barber Ivan Jakovlevitch finds a customer's nose baked into his breakfast bread and, terrified of being blamed, throws it into the river from a bridge, where a police officer spots him.
- The missing nose (Part II)
Kovaloff wakes without his nose, then sees it in the uniform of a State Councillor and is snubbed when he speaks to it.
- No help anywhere (Part II)
A newspaper clerk refuses his advertisement, a police commissary brushes him off, and Kovaloff blames a lady whose daughter he would not marry.
- Rumor and return (Part II)
Crowds gather to see the wandering nose; a police officer brings it back, but it will not stick and the doctor will not help.
- Restored (Part III)
On 7 April the nose is suddenly back in place, Kovaloff struts about the city again, and the narrator admits that much of the tale looks improbable.
Characters
- Kovaloff, protagonist
A collegiate official who calls himself 'Major', vain about his rank and appearance, who loses his nose.
- The nose, major
Kovaloff's nose, which takes on a life of its own and the rank of a State Councillor.
- Ivan Jakovlevitch, major
A St. Petersburg barber who finds the nose in his bread.
- Prasskovna Ossipovna, minor
The barber's sharp-tongued wife.
- Madame Podtotchina, minor
A colonel's wife whom Kovaloff suspects of witchcraft because he would not marry her daughter.
- The police commissary, minor
An official who eventually returns the nose.
Lessons
Vanity and rank
Kovaloff cares more about his title, his whiskers and his chances of a good marriage than about anything else. Gogol shows how absurd a life becomes when it is built on appearances.
- What does Kovaloff worry about most after losing his nose?
- Why is it funny that the nose outranks him?
Satire through the absurd
Gogol never explains how the nose escaped; instead every character reacts to the impossible with ordinary bureaucratic fussiness. The joke exposes the habits of a society more concerned with procedure and reputation than with truth.
- How do the newspaper clerk and the police respond to Kovaloff's problem?
- What does the story gain by never explaining the mystery?
Reading a narrator
The narrator begins as a matter-of-fact reporter and ends by admitting that a good deal of the story looks improbable. Readers learn to watch how a storyteller's voice shapes the meaning of what he tells.
- Why does the narrator tell us at the end that such things do happen?
- Is the narrator part of the satire?
For the Christian reader
Gogol, a devout Orthodox believer in his later years, aims his comedy at pride: a man who thinks himself important is undone by losing a single, ridiculous part of himself. The story is a comic picture of the vanity Scripture warns against, and it invites readers to laugh at their own concern for status.
- Where do you see pride in Kovaloff's behavior?
- What would humility look like in his situation?
Context
Under Nicholas I, Russia's civil servants were ranked in the fourteen grades of Peter the Great's Table of Ranks, and rank governed dress, forms of address and social standing. St. Petersburg, the capital, was full of officials anxious to rise.
Composition
Gogol wrote the story in 1835–1836 while living in St. Petersburg, and Pushkin published it in 1836 in his journal The Contemporary. Claud Field's English translation, used here, appeared in The Mantle and Other Stories in 1916.
Reception
The story became one of the most famous Russian short stories and a landmark of the absurd in literature. Dmitri Shostakovich based his first opera, The Nose (1930), on it.
Comparisons
- The Overcoat
Gogol's other great Petersburg tale also turns on a humble official and an object (a coat) that comes to stand for his place in the world; read the two together to see Gogol's comedy and pathos.
- The Metamorphosis
Kafka's Gregor Samsa also wakes to an impossible bodily change; both stories treat the absurd with deadpan seriousness.
- The Double
Dostoevsky's Golyadkin meets a double who takes over his life, a darker variation on Gogol's runaway nose.
- Notes from Underground
Dostoevsky's underground man is another St. Petersburg official consumed by questions of status and humiliation.
- Gulliver's Travels
Swift, like Gogol, uses fantastic events to satirize human pride and the vanities of public life.
Quotes
“On the 25th March, 18--, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg.”
“Accordingly, the reader can judge for himself what his sensations were when he found in his face, instead of a fairly symmetrical nose, a broad, flat vacancy.”
“There you are wrong, respected sir; I am myself.”
“Certainly one could replace it at once, but I assure you the remedy would be worse than the disease.”
“Whatever may be said to the contrary, such cases do occur--rarely, it is true, but now and then actually.”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- How calmly the characters react to an impossible event.
- Every mention of rank, uniform or title.
- Kovaloff's reasons for wanting his nose back.
- The narrator's comments at the very end.
Key terms and names
- Table of Ranks
- Peter the Great's system of fourteen grades for Russian officials and officers.
- State Councillor
- A rank in the fifth grade of the civil service, well above Kovaloff's own.
- Satire
- Writing that uses humor and exaggeration to criticize folly or vice.
- Absurd
- Wildly unreasonable or illogical, used in fiction to unsettle or amuse.
- Nevsky Avenue
- St. Petersburg's grand main street, where fashionable people walked to be seen.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension Where is the nose found, and what does the barber do with it?
- Comprehension What happens when Kovaloff speaks to his nose?
- Interpretation Why does Gogol dress the nose in a higher rank than Kovaloff's?
- Interpretation Has Kovaloff learned anything by the end?
- Big Question Why do people care so much about status and appearances?
- Big Question Can comedy teach moral lessons as well as serious stories?
Faith Connections
- Proverbs 16:18 (Scripture)
'Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall': Kovaloff's pride makes his comic fall all the greater.
- 1 Samuel 16:7 (Scripture)
'Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart': the story mocks a world that judges only by appearances.
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Great Conversation)
Swift's fantastic voyages satirize the same human vanity Gogol mocks.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: By treating an impossible event as an everyday bureaucratic problem, the story argues that a society obsessed with rank and appearances is itself absurd.
Rhetorical device: Deadpan irony. The narrator reports a nose in a State Councillor's uniform as calmly as a change in the weather.
Debate: Resolved: Kovaloff is more foolish than the society that surrounds him.
Memory Work
On the 25th March, 18--, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Explain what 'The Nose' satirizes and how its absurdity makes the satire work.
Comparison with The Overcoat: Compare Kovaloff and Akaky Akakievich: how does Gogol use each man's lost possession to reveal his character and his society?
Creative Prompts
- Fiction
Write the newspaper advertisement Kovaloff wanted to place, then the clerk's reply.
- Essay
Explain how Gogol uses rank and uniforms to make the story funny, and what he is criticizing.
- Classroom
Read 'The Nose' and 'The Overcoat' together and chart how each story treats its hero: with mockery, with pity, or both.
Further Reading
- The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol
- The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol
- Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
- Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov
A short, lively critical study (1944).
Verification notes
Full text from Project Gutenberg #36238 (The Mantle and Other Stories, tr. Claud Field, 1916). All quotations are exact substrings of the stored text. Character names follow Field's spellings (Kovaloff, Ivan Jakovlevitch). Publication details follow the Wikipedia article on the story.
No verification flags recorded.