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Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
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Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Afterwords
Did you miss the meeting? Or did we fail to discuss all the questions? Perhaps something slipped your mind, or only occurred to you later. If so, here's your chance to continue the conversation. For the time being, this blog is open for comment only to registered members of the book group. Other readers may contact me at hcrane@cambridgema.gov. Please, no flaming or cussing.
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1 comment:
We discussed in the reading group that the realism of the beginning, as well as the way people have perfectly rational discussions, heightens the absurdity and humor of the story. But there are several puzzles about having the story start with the barber, rather than with Kovalev himself. First, the barber didn't have anything to do with the nose disappearing from Kovalev's face, as we find out later. Second, if the story is really about Kovalev and his struggle to deal with his bizarre situation, it's not clear why the barber should be mentioned at all.
One explanation is that the barber matters for the theme of social classes. The barber is clearly poor, in contrast to Kovalev. We are not even told his last name. He is also regularly insulted by Kovalev, who tells him that his hands stink. We might expect the barber to fantasize about revenge, since clients are at his mercy when he shaves them with a straight razor (Sweeney Todd?). The story begins on a note of violence, with a mention "we also let blood here" on the barber's store sign. He cuts open the breakfast roll with a knife and pokes at the nose. He tries to hide the evidence, but a police inspector stops him.
More evidence for the social class theme might be found in the great emphasis placed on clothing and appearance. For Kovalev, of course, his whole life seems bound up in being an "empty suit" who has an official title and the right clothes and appearance to go along with it, even though he doesn't really do anything. But for the barber, it is the clothing of other people in authority that matter: he freezes when he sees the hat and saber of the police inspector, or trembles when he imagines the "silver-braided, scarlet collars of the police." He himself has a worn-out coat with three buttons missing. Later we find out he has stolen buttons in a store. Toward the end of the story Kovalev sees an army official who has "a nose about the size of a waistcoat button." The buttons and the nose both become symbolic of what "holds up" the social order or keeps up the appearance of authority and worthiness, whereas we suspect (or suspect that Gogol suspected) that it's all a farce. I'm not arguing that the barber is actually a revolutionary. Indeed, in stealing the buttons he could be seen as trying to better his own "appearance." But Gogol does seem to be writing a social satire in which the fantasies and desires of those at the bottom matter as much as those of the upper class. That seems to be the main reason he has been called the "father of modern Russian realism." Maybe we should also call him the "father of Russian surrealism!"
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