In a typical passage, the reader will encounter a character who might say something utterly commonplace such as: “I won’t have coffee today, Praskovia Osipovna, instead I will take some hot bread with onions.” The character says little that can be used to describe himself. This narrator, seemingly prolix and sometimes random, will supply the reader with most of the information that will ever be revealed about a character. One of Gogol’s favored narrative devices can be called the chatty narrator. It is a tribute to Gogol’s skill that his characters do not necessarily become superficial or unidimensional as a result but are imbued with certain attributes that display a wide range of human passion, particularly human dignity and the cognizance of the injustices created in social stratification. The social satire, deeply embedded in the manners of the characters, unfolds without special machinations and with few unnatural speech acts, such as asides.

The actions literally speak louder than words. In his plays, speech is swept aside from its characteristic place in the foreground the dramatic foreground is given over to the manner or mannerisms of the characters.

The depth of his psychological portraiture and the sweep of his romantic apostrophes, however, remain powerful and fascinating.

Nor does he engender his heroes with abandon and ennui, as do his near contemporaries Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov. His genius does not dwell in philosophical dialogues, allegory, or involved interior monologue as do the realist novels of the latter half of the century. Gogol focuses his major creative occupation on the manners of his characters his creative energy is nowhere more apparent than in the “mannerizing” in which he describes and characterizes. These petty clerks, all socially dysfunctional in some major respect, nevertheless explore the great depth of the human soul and exhibit certain personality traits characteristic of the greatest heroes in literature. His heroes of the “little man” variety imprinted the most profound impression on his readers and critics alike. Frequently, the supernatural or some confounding coincidence plays a major role in his works. He captures the “real” against the background of the imagined and, in the estimation of at least one critic, the surreal. He bridges the period between Romanticism and realism in Russian literature. Nikolai Gogol (31 March 1809 – 4 March 1852) combines the consummate stylist with the innocent spectator, flourishes and flounces with pure human emotion, naturalism with delicate sensitivity.

1842 novel by gogol