My first reaction to reading “The Nose” was “What in the world…”
Wow, this class never fails to hand out reading assignments beginning with a spiral of confusion. After reading the first couple of paragraphs of “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol, I felt like I was reading The Metamorphosis again. The strangest things happen in these works. I mean, in The Metamorphosis, out of nowhere, Gregor becomes a bug. And now, in “The Nose,” I suddenly read about a man finding a nose in his loaf of bread? Props to you, Professor. The element of surprise will never leave me.
As I was reading it, questions kept popping into my head, for example: how was Ivan able to identify who the nose belonged to? I mean, if you chopped my friend’s nose off and left it on the table, I highly doubt I’d be able to identify it. Another question I had was: why did they call what I assume to be facial hair, “whiskers”? I also noticed that facial hair seemed to be a representative of high rank, which I thought was kind of peculiar. For example, Ivan says to the police inspector, “‘ I am willing to shave Your Grace two or even three times a week gratis.’” Ivan refers to the police inspector’s facial hair as “Your Grace,” capitalized too, as if it were an actual person. I also questioned why Gogol decided to leave the scene where Ivan was being questioned by the police officer “unknown” and just tells us later that Ivan was thrown in jail, it sort of left me hanging. Although the story is very unique and truly “one of a kind”, I though it was a bit inconsistent, which is why I can’t say I absolutely loved “The Nose.”
I do applaud Gogol for being able to incorporate societal problems in such an interesting way though. Who would have thought the issue of social power could be portrayed through a story about a nose? Honestly, right after finishing the full short story, I still did not understand the meaning behind it. I still don’t get it, but later on I did realize some key points to the story are the actions and thoughts of Major Kovaloff. Kovaloff sees his nose dressed in a uniform of higher rank and feels the need to speak respectfully to it. In fact, he plucks up courage to speak to his nose and calls him “honourable sir.” This ridiculous situation really shows that rank, no matter whom/what you are, prevails. I also thought back to the words that Kovaloff kept saying and the way he thought. What really struck me was the reason he wanted his nose back. Every time he explains why he cannot go without a nose, it is purely because of his image. Every time he complains of his loss, he says something relating to his many lady friends and his rank in society. For example, Kovaloff says, “Every Thursday I call on the wife of M. Tchektyriev, the state-councillor; Madame Podtotchina, a Colonel’s wife who has a very pretty daughter, is one of my acquaintances; and what am I to do now? I cannot appear before them like this.” This really reminded me of Gregor because both of their thought-processes are so out of place. Gregor wanted to become human again mainly because he wanted to go back to work and earn money for his family. Kovaloff in this case wanted his nose back so he could continue flirting with ladies he would not marry. I mean, did he not care about his sense of smell? His ability to taste and smell food? He did not think of the loss of his nose as the loss of one of his five senses, but merely a loss in his “normal,” society-accepted image. To me, that is preposterous.
My favorite lines in the whole story are “But nothing is permanent in this world. Joy in the second moment of its arrival is already less keen than in the first, is still fainter in the third, and finishes by coalescing with out normal mental state, just as the circles which the fall of a pebble forms on the surface of water, gradually die away.” I’m honestly not sure what it is about these few lines, but it’s something that is completely true, and I never really noticed it. This made me think back to psychology class and about this process called Adaptation-Level Phenomenon, which is the tendency people have to quickly adapt to a new situation, until that situation becomes the norm. It constantly raises the expectations and levels of “normality.” It also makes me think about the disparity of the levels of content throughout social classes. For example, a child living in poverty may be extremely content with a happy meal from McDonald’s, while a child who’s family is in the top 1% of America may only be content being served top quality filet mignon. Relating back to Adaptation-Level Phenomenon, the reason these two children have such drastically different levels of contentment is because their “norms” are at such different levels, what they are “used to” are very different.
I thought this was a rather confusing work with many hidden themes and lessons, and I can’t wait to see the opera version of it.
