My animation (click to play):
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The main focus of my animation is the idea of a social ladder in Kovaloff’s society along with the confusion and absurdity conveyed in Gogol’s story “The Nose.” My animation starts off with a fictitious ladder that gets narrower and narrower as you go up. Also, the difference between the steps increases as you go up. This symbolizes how there are more people at the bottom of the social ladder than at the top and how people of higher social status become “unapproachable” to the people at the bottom. Also, the cartoon depiction of Kovaloff and his nose in my animation emphasizes how the story is so fictional despite its hidden message towards a realistic societal issue.
At the beginning of the story, Kovaloff’s ranking as a state-councillor is decent and he is obsessed with it. Therefore, Kovaloff is pictured as a young man in business attire in my collage. However, when Kovaloff suddenly loses his nose, his appearance is destroyed and therefore, he feels like he has tumbled down the social ladder towards the bottom. Meanwhile, the fictitious nose with its own set of eyes, arms, and legs, seem to be of a higher social status than he was. Because of this, Kovaloff had trouble approaching the nose and once he gathered up the courage to do so, the nose dismissed him because of his lower ranking. Afterward, Kovaloff ventures on his fruitless search of the nose. Despite his lost nose, he was often thinking about his lady friends in his mind rather than focus on finding the nose. After a fit of despair, he writes a letter to Madam Podtochina, accusing her of stealing his nose and dismissing her as his friend.
Towards the end of the story, I get more and more confused as the nose starts walking around the city and attracting large crowds, and then one morning, it magically returns back to Kovaloff’s face in the correct spot. Therefore, I put up a lot of “question mark” signs in my animation to show how confusing and silly the ending was. Although Kovaloff receives his nose back and his life is back to normal, the idea of a social ladder is still there. It merely becomes less noticeable to both Kovaloff and the audience because the initial problem was resolved. Therefore, rather than destroying the ladder, the ladder was blurred out of our minds as people such as Kovaloff returned their focus to their work and courtship rather than in seeing the walking nose. Gogol does not provide any sort of resolution to the overbearingness and rigidness of social status, and therefore, the social ladder remains in the exact same state at the end of the story. Also, Kovaloff was a static character who was unaffected by his experience so he remains the same as well.
And here is my collage:
I think your collage really reflected the theme of social hierarchy in “The Nose.” Your explanation of the ladder and where you placed Kovaloff in relation to his nose was clearly presented in your animation. However, the most powerful moment in the animation for me was when the “pyramid” ladder flashed and question marks appeared in the different grids. The appearance of that action made me think of game shows like “Jeopardy,” where questions are posed and answers are quickly revealed. When that connection sprang in my mind, I thought, “That’s a rather absurd thought to be having about ‘The Nose”.” But, maybe that was a subtlety to your project. The idea of having all the answers to every question is mocked by Gogol. He creates a story with no explanation as to how the main problem occurred and is resolved. Thus, Gogol uses absurdity to comment on how the pursuit of knowledge is pointless. And, moreover, unattainable in times during the Russian Revolution.