His “tremb” suggests that he finds this power awe-inspiring, fearsome, and perhaps even rousing.

and he trembled all over.” Yakovlevich’s admiration for the officer uniforms betrays a reverence for the power and status they hold in society. But, even as he fearfully imagines the police taking him in, his thoughts turn to the stately uniforms that the officers wear: “He could already picture the scarlet collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sword. As Yakovlevich walks the napkin-wrapped nose to the river, he fears the patrolling officers. To avoid any trouble with Kovalev, a man of a higher class than himself, Yakovlevich decides to dump the nose in the river. While Yakovlevich is perhaps not doing the best job dressing like a true upper-class man, his breakfast outfit shows that he deeply admires the elite and longs to emulate them, even if he doesn’t actually enjoy the riches and social rank that they do.Īt breakfast, Yakovlevich finds a detached, lifeless nose in his breakfast, which he immediately recognizes as belonging to a man named Kovalev. To eat breakfast in his own home, Yakovlevich pairs a dressy “tailcoat” with his “underclothes” for the “sake of propriety.” Presumably the only bit of formal wear Yakovlevich can afford is the tailcoat, marking his outfit as both comic and tragic. Like the age-old adage “dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” Yakovlevich’s own attire-plus his observations of other peoples’ outfits-show that he aspires to be accepted by the upper crust of society and be perceived as a man of status and wealth, even though he has neither in reality. As the characters in the story rely on sartorial choices as a type of language to communicate social position, Gogol implies that this behavior shows how shallow the characters are: to a fault, they are all focused on outward appearances, not the persons underneath.

Petersburg during a time of widespread economic disparity, Gogol embeds a scratching critique of society within the narrator’s fashion-based descriptions of the story’s three principal characters: Kovalev, Yakovlevich, and the titular nose. In the time between detaching and reattaching, the nose himself has an adventure: dressing and acting like a gentleman of higher rank than his owner. “The Nose” follows a man named Collegiate Assessor Kovalev as he inexplicably loses-and tries to get back-his nose.

The nose gogol summary