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Comparison Of Realism In 'The Nose And The Overcoat'

1578 Words7 Pages

In the other two stories the duality of a person becomes intertwined with the dual image of the city. In "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" the duality reflected both in microcosm of a person and the macrocosm of the city serve as a source of characters ' madness. The duality of the city develops through the Hoffman tradition of grotesque and surrealism. Gogolian Petersburg is the city of a "struggle between the dream and materiality" . In this city the real intertwines with imaginary to such an extent that it is no longer possible to detect the borderline. This dual atmosphere is created through an artistic space, where the fantastic essence hides under a seemingly ordinary facade. The artistic space Gogol creates "is achieved through the extreme concreteness, the materiality of the space, which at the same time appears to be completely imaginary" . Thereby, in "The Nose" a fantastically disappeared part of the body is cut during such a mundane procedure as shaving and is found in such an ordinary object as a loaf of bread. In the same way, in "The Overcoat" a mundane piece of clothing becomes a center of the fantastic events. In addition an ordinary barber and a tailor play the roles of antagonists, who personify the devil. The confusion between dream and reality in "The Nose" allow Gogol introduce the reader to a new space, where he would take for granted even the most dramatic plot twists. At the same time such a thin borderline between reality and fantasy, where neither

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