Gogol’s Petersburg Tales Essay

Comp ar Nikolai Gogols The dandycoat with the other St. Petersburg tales. Nikolai Gogols St. Petersburg stories have been interpreted as tales of social injustice, urban and human isolation, psychological studies, love stories, moralistic fables and social satires. In guardianship with emerging trends of realistic writing, the stories deal with relatively junior-grade members of the social strata in the Petersburg bureaucracy the everyman. This render will compare The overcoating with Diary of a Madman and The dig and examine how each of the main characters in Gogols stories survives in the obviously unnatural and fabricated world of St. Petersburg. The principal character in The Overcoat, Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin buries himself so deeply in his paltry croak of write documents that his work almost supersedes the actual reality in which he inhabits, he is exposit walking through the streets of St. Petersburg oblivious to the people around him or the snipe being throw n break windows onto him, he sees nonhing alone a line of beautiful words to copy.He later does the same when obsessing or so the coat which he is having made to shield him from the bitter Russian winter. This impoverishment to cloak and insulate oneself from the frigidness harshness of modern society is an judgement which runs through these three stories, and seemed to preoccupy Gogol himself. He was a faithful mortal ab out(predicate) which very little is known, he said himself in his letter But how give the gate one judge about a secretive person in whom everything is inside, whose character hasnt even taken bring about but who is still educating himself in his soul and whose every move produces only when misunderstanding? How can one make conclusions about such a person basing oneself on a few traits which have inadvertently stuck themselves out? Wont this be the same as to conclude about a book by a few sentences torn out of it not in order either, but from differ ent passages. Gogol was interested in how the character and worth of aroundone is judged by others, the characters in The Petersburg Stories are completely defined, some(prenominal) by themselves and by others, by their professions, which are comi bring upy insignificant, Akaky Akakievich copied pages and Poprishchin in Diary of a Madman was in charge of pencil sharpening.These characters are defined by the role they serve as part of the bureaucracy rather than by any kind of individual identity. Gogol paints a imprint of a society in which values the most superficial aspects of a person, an idea which is taken to comical new heights in The nestwhen the preposterous and vain main character Major Kovalyov loses something which serves no great purpose other than normalising ones appearance his nose. Escapism is necessary for Gogols characters. Each of the main characters feels happiest when they are detached from reality, when they have some sort of rosy, imaginary insulation b etween them and the inescapable monotony of their modest lives. Akaky Akakievich is described garnering a disproportionate amount of joy from his work copying documents, smiling to himself as he coppied letters he particularly liked, overtaking home and copying just for fun and when all strive to disport themselves going to bed smiling at thought of coming twenty-four hour period.Akaky puts all of his faith and love and passion into something arbitrary and ultimately nonmeaningful as a coping apparatus, for how else would he survive his pitiful forethoughter? The main character in Diary of a Madman Poprishkin is impelled to a similar detachment from the real world as his lowly and socially immobile position as a titular council member becomes too much to bear. He loses his sanity but arguably gains something of great value confidence and social mobility. In creating a world for himself where he is no longer one of many middle aged, poorly paying(a) low ranking civil serva nts but the King of Spain he frees himself from his kill ties to societal norms, he no longer believes in the inherent high quality of those of a higher social status, he even has the audacity to call his employer as an ordinary doornail, a simple doornail, nothing more. The kind use in doors. Similarly, Kovalyov deludes himself to give his life a sense of importance and significance.He gives himself the title of Major and struts down Nevsky Prospect making eye forgather with everyone and imagining attention from ladies that he passes. The key difference between the coping mechanism employed by Akaky and the methods used by Poprishkin and Kobalev is that Akakys world is not one which elevates his social status. His extremely introverted behaviour does not stop the status quo. It is arguably their obsession with class and how they appear to others which causes all of both Kovalev and Poprishkins strife. Contrastingly, Akaky just wants to be left alone, he doesnt care that people often see him with trifle or hay stuck to the hold up of his cape, this makes Akaky a more likeable, sympathetic character, he is completely harmless and needy a perfect victim. This is the only story in which Gogol allows us to be fully sympathetic with a character. There areindeed moments in Diary of a Madman which could and should stir sympathy for Poprishkin in the reader, but Gogol always undermines these moments with a humorous or nonsensical comment.In The Overcoat however, the narrative tone flips from heart wrenchingly sad to funny and light hearted and consequently back again in the space of a page Gogol displays his endowment fund for evoking sympathy and emotion in a reader and his gift for buffoonery side by side. It is not just the characters who seek to cover themselves up and conceal the truth from the reader there is a lack of reliableness coupled with nonsense running through all three of the narratives which pig-headedly refuses to make sense. The Overcoat introduces us to this immediately, it begins with a digression In the part of but it is better not to mention the department. The narrator continues in this vein, apply a conversational, unreliable tone, often forgetting the facts or losing their place in the story.Gogols deliberate elusiveness undermines the idea of the omniscient authorial voice of the narrator and injects distrust and confusion into the narrative. Gogol uses a similar narrative voice in The pry. The narrator of The Nose is similarly uninformed and forgetful and makes no strain to elucidate the reason for all the bizarre occurrences in the story. Things in these stories can often just disappear into a puff of smoke, Gogol increases the confusion, and elusiveness with the use of a lot of obscure and smoke imagery, he is like a magician, cloaking his intentions, keeping himself safe behind a cloud of nonsense and a mist of confusion.Gogols St. Petersburg stories portray many different types of characters, bu t pervading through the stories and legal jointure them is this sense of heightened self-consciousness a need to protect oneself from a befuddling, cold harsh world. Gogol himself put it best in another St Petersburg story Nevsky Prospekt It had seemed as if some demon had crumbled the world into bits and mixed all these bits indiscriminately unneuroticBibliographyGogol, Nikolai translated by Macandrew, Andrew R and Meyer, Priscilla The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories SIGNET CLASSICS, January 2005, fresh York, NY/US One Of The Oldest Cases Of Schizophrenia In Gogols Diary Of A Madman Eric Lewin AltschulerBMJ British Medical Journal , Vol. 323, No. 7327 (Dec. 22 29, 2001), pp. 1475-1477 publish by BMJ Publishing Group obligate durable URL http//www.jstor.org/ steadfast/25468632 Cloaking the Self The Literary Space of Gogols Overcoat Charles C. Bernheimer PMLA , Vol. 90, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), pp. 53-61 Published by Modern Language Association Article Stable URL http//www. jstor.org/stable/461347 The Laughter of Gogol R. W. Hallett Russian Review , Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1971), pp. 373-384 Published by Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review Article Stable URL http//www.jstor.org/stable/127792