I expected a lot from this story, since I was told that it’s weirder than “The Metamorphosis” in some ways. That’s not to say that “The Nose” wasn’t weird. I just felt that it took a backseat to Kafka’s work. In any case, my first impression of this story was that it tried hard to be weird in the most ordinary sense. It didn’t take the apparent subject matter – the guys lost his nose, people – at hand very seriously. It was light-hearted and there was a general vibe of “don’t worry readers, everything will turn out fine.”
The story is simply about a guy who lost his nose; it could’ve been anything – chin, butt, potbelly (Once seen as a symbol of wealth.), you name it. The point is not what’s missing, but how humdrum the story seems to be. Now I know some people will disagree with me on what I just said. I understand that there’s an apparent theme of social/class status throughout the story and it’s all very satirical, but that’s not what I gleaned from the first reading. Before trying to interpret anything (After all, what one interprets might be slightly different than what the author was trying to convey.) I usually try to read it at face value and try to feel what strikes me personally.
These last two paragraphs from the story struck me the most:
“But the most incomprehensible thing of all is, how authors can choose such subjects for their stories. That really surpasses my understanding. In the first place, no advantage results from it for the country; and in the second place, no harm results either.
All the same, when one reflects well, there really is something in the matter. Whatever may be said to the contrary, such cases do occur — rarely, it is true, but now and then actually.”
Okay, I get it. The “something in the matter” might actually bring us back to the themes throughout the story, but honestly, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. It can really just be about the idea that pockets of strange occurrences may or may not have popped up in the stream of time and sometimes, interpret as one might, it’s just what it is. It’s just about a really stubborn and egotistical prick and his missing nose; with a dish of something that might whet your philosophical/interpretational appetite on the side. That’s my two cents.
While I was reading the story I got the same impression as you; that Gogol spent dozens of pages making a point that could have been written much more succinctly. There were a couple of sections that I really liked and that I thought expressed his theme very well, like when Kovaliov worries about what people will think about his face with no nose or when he has a conversation with his nose. I thought those sections really were a satirical criticism of the Russian class system. But I definitely agree with you that most of the story was simply a guy worrying about his nose and it was hard to find any deeper meaning. Maybe if Gogol would have shortened the story or added more analysis the novella as a whole would have been more convincing. So even though there were some thought-provoking paragraphs I agree that this work wasn’t nearly as good as The Metamorphosis.
I like the way you described The Nose, “weird in an ordinary way,” because I also thought it wasn’t as weird as Metamorphosis but still, nonetheless weird. While I was reading it, I also got a light-hearted tone from the way it was written. Now that you point it out, the story does seem to be anti-climatic in that the problem at hand was probably, most likely going to be resolved peacefully. It was simply, as a reader I couldn’t fathom how Gogol was going to do it. Certainly the most peaceful ending was indeed having the nose just magically be back on the face a few days later.