Only a few pages into The Nose, I already felt myself making connections to the still-fresh-in-my-head Metamorphosis. The obvious similarity between the two was the ridiculously absurd storyline. When I first read that Kovalev’s nose had fallen off, I immediately pictured Voldemort from Harry Potter and I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one.

As I read on, I was pleased to see that at least the story was not told in the same serious manner that Metamorphosis was. It was almost as if Gogol was acknowledging somewhat how ridiculous everything was.

An image that kept popping into my head whenever the nose would appear were those fake nose glasses. I’m not exactly sure why, but that is what I pictured the nose in the story to look like.

After reading only a little while longer, it became apparent to me that the nose isn’t really just a nose, its meant to symbolize something larger. With this in mind, it became much easier to read through it. I no longer had to bother myself with the small trivial questions, such as “how can he breath without a nose”, and “how is the nose even alive?” It was definitely a relief to be able to now focus on the larger picture of the story.

As we discussed this week, a major underlying theme in The Nose is social status. While reading, I felt as though, for Kovalev, the nose was a symbol of his higher status, and when he lost it, he suddenly felt embarrassed, self-conscious and in a way, poor. It wasn’t until the nose returned to his face, that we saw Kovalev again with all of his confidence and ego.

After reading the story, I think that instead of focusing on the nose, we should be focusing on the nose. With the former being the actual physical nose, and the latter being what the nose represents.