When I was reading Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose, I wasn’t sure what was happening. From just the title, I didn’t expect a literal story of a nose character. When Ivan Jakovlevitch found the nose inside his bread, I thought that maybe it was going to be a light horror story. But then Major Kovaloff woke up perfectly healthy and alive, albeit without a nose. I imagined his reaction to somewhere along the lines of ↓ but without the nose.

Although I couldn’t understand the logic of The Nose‘s universe, such as the moving nose or the flat piece of skin in place of Kovaloff’s missing nose, it was very amusing to picture the story in my head. I couldn’t quite grasp whether Kovaloff’s nose was an actual nose the size of a regular human being with arms and legs, or an actual nose the size of a nose with arms and legs, or a regular human being simply being called a nose. Though, I probably saw a Probopass simply because Kovaloff probably hadn’t shaved yet, and because it’s one “status” higher than a Nosepass.

What struck me as the most logically part of the story was when the official refused to advertise for Kovaloff’s missing nose because the paper’s readers would think it nonsense and lies. If there was such an advertisement in our paper, I’m sure most of us would think it so too. Yet, despite the absurdity that the official was saying that a missing nose was, he was completely unfazed when Kovaloff revealed his nose-less face, but still called it “hardly credible.”

The Nose is full of things that didn’t seem real. I figured it was supposed to be comical, but just that I didn’t understand Gogol’s sense of humor. And I hardly saw any sort of meaning behind the story before our discussion in class. But now I understand that the nose symbolized social status, and everything makes sense now.