![]() ![]() He is horrified and recognizes the nose as belonging to one of his customers, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov. On 25 March, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich cuts a loaf while having breakfast and finds a nose. As he confronts his terrible fate, Kovalyov struggles with self-esteem in his status-obsessed society. The loss greatly disturbs him, for how could a gentleman go about in society without a nose? In the frantic search for his nose, Kovalyov discovers it has taken on a life of its own and even surpassed him in rank. ![]() One morning, he wakes up, looks in the mirror, and finds his nose missing. Kovalyov is a Collegiate Assessor who dreams of being promoted and enjoys flirting with respectable ladies. However, this system also led to bloated and inefficient bureaucracies in which many of Gogol’s characters work. Commoners could move up in society because of the Table of Ranks, a system that awarded titles based on government or military service. “The Nose” satirizes the obsession with rank, which was pervasive in Imperial Russia. The motif of a nose was inspired by Gogol’s own oddly shaped nose, which he made self-deprecating jokes about in his letters. ![]() His nose takes on a life of its own and surpasses him by attaining the rank of State Councillor. The story revolves around Kovalyov, a Collegiate Assessor who wakes up one morning to find that his nose has vanished. It was first published in 1836 in The Contemporary, a literary journal owned by Alexander Pushkin. ![]()
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