So, in reading Gogol, I was struck by how much we take for granted. We are confronted by the absurd more and more each day, so that when one reads stories by people like Gogol, Havel, or even Kafka, we have no problem skipping past the wierdness in the search for deeper meaning. I think these stories lose something when the absurdities are ignored. People seem to have the tendancy to say “Oh, they’re surrealist” and jump straight into the plot , or the political message, (I know I’m generalizing). I really enjoyed how we delved into the deeper meaning of losing a part of one’s self, but I think it could have been more. I can see why a nose would have been chosen to go missing since it is such an obvious defect when it is gone. But why would it walk around the streets, get a job, pretend to be someone important, or try to leave town? I think that if the author has something to say, it makes more sense to say it than to try to prove how smart one is by trying to outsmart his readers.
On a different note, I was watching the Matrix last night, and there’s a scene where Keanu Reeve’s character has his mouth taken away. It was the most disturbing thing I have seen in quite a while. He ceased to look human. He was there, moving about, but he had lost a vital part of what we consider to be “us”. Now what would happen if it started walking around? Naturally, poor Keanu would want his mouth back. But what if it didn’t want to be part of him.
Looking deeper, we can say that Keanu lost his mouth because there was an oppresive force that was preventing him from speaking out, both literally and figuratively. So what can that tell us about the loss of the nose? Maybe Gogol was trying to say that something didn’t smell right in the government. Maybe the nose was trying to sniff it out.
Annaliese
