Plan
Introduction
Images of officials - a gallery of typical characters of provincial Russia.
Main part
Officials personify power in the county town:
a) mayor;
b) Lyapkin-Tyapkin;
c) Luka Lukic;
d) postmaster;
d) Strawberries.
Conclusion
In the images of officials, the writer satirically showed his contemporary reality.
Images of officials in the comedy by N.V. Gogol's "The Inspector General" is a gallery of typical characters of provincial Russia.
In the county town, they personify power and strength, the highest circle of local society. They are all individual. Thus, the Mayor rightfully served his position for thirty years. He is distinguished by his cunning and ability to maintain his material interests everywhere. Anton Antonovich is proud that he can deceive anyone: “He has deceived swindlers, swindlers and rogues such that they are ready to rob the whole world...” With his superiors he is obsequious and respectful, with his inferiors he is rude and unceremonious. If merchants can be dragged by their beards, then he curries favor with Khlestakov and enthusiastically describes to him how he does not sleep at night, caring for the well-being of the city. He assures that he does not need honors, but he is lying. In fact, he is ambitious and dreams of serving in the capital, of the rank of general. And imagining that he will soon have this, he despises those below him even more, demanding new offerings from them.
Other officials are just as selfish and ambitious. Openly neglecting his service, Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin is passionate only about hunting and even takes bribes with “greyhound puppies.” Gogol says about him that he has read five or six books “and therefore is somewhat free-thinking,” and Strawberry describes the judge as follows: “Every word you say, Cicero rolled off your tongue.” But from fear of the auditor, even the judge becomes timid and tongue-tied. Luka Lukich, superintendent of schools, is even more cowardly: “God forbid you serve in the academic department! You are afraid of everything: everyone gets in the way, everyone wants to show that he too clever man" The charge of freethinking threatened with hard labor, and any reason for such an accusation could be filed - if the teacher, for example, makes some kind of grimace. The postmaster is curious and opens other people's letters, and keeps the ones he likes for himself. But the lowest and most dishonest of the officials is Strawberry, the trustee of charitable institutions. He steals, like all of them, his patients do not receive any medicine and “get well like flies.” He tries in every possible way to emphasize his services to Khlestakov. He is just as envious as everyone else. But he not only curries favor with the auditor, but is also ready to write a denunciation against all his friends, accusing them of neglect of business, immorality and even freethinking: “For the benefit of the fatherland, I must do this, although he is my relative and friend.”
Gogol officials county town deceitful and vile, selfish and immoral. They please those above them and despise those below them, despise those whose labors contribute to their well-being. This is the author’s satirical reflection of modern reality.
The district town in which Khlestakov accidentally found himself was located in the depths of Russia, “even if you ride for three years, you won’t reach any state.” In the image of this city, all “Russian life is meaningful” (Yu. Mann).
A city is its inhabitants. Gogol portrays, first of all, the main officials. In the play there are six of them and Khlestakov, whom they, with their fear, elevated to the rank of a powerful auditor.
Officials, although they represent one layer (officialdom) of the county society, are all different... Here is Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, the surname comes from the colloquial expression tyap-blunder, that is, somehow. He is a fan of hound hunting. In his court, instead of the emblem of justice, there hangs a hunting arapnik. The postmaster reads other people's letters and keeps the most interesting ones for himself “as a souvenir.” Strawberry informer. It is in charge of “charitable institutions”, that is, hospitals, shelters for orphans and the elderly. The gentle surname only emphasizes the evil trickiness of this character: as soon as he finds himself alone with Khlestakov, he immediately files a secret denunciation against all the officials of the district city.
The superintendent of the schools, Khlopov (from “khlop” - servant, serf) is the most intimidated official, always trembling before the highest ranks. But main man in the bureaucratic world, this is a mayor with an intricate and long surname - Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky “a see-through, clear-cut guy.” The mayor is a very intelligent person. Gogol specifically writes about this in his additions to the play. The author feared that the mayor would be mistaken for a stupid person who could be easily deceived. And he is “already old in the service and a very intelligent man in his own way.” “Moreover, he is accustomed to the fact that an intelligent person is one who will not allow himself to be deceived, but he himself constantly deceives others.”
All officials in Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General" have their own face, the character of each of them is sharply outlined. And they live in accordance with their characters, habits and position. The “smart” mayor held name days for himself twice a year in order to receive gifts. The “sweet and kind” postmaster, satisfying his curiosity, reads other people’s letters. “Tender” Strawberry, like a family, steals money intended for the purchase of medicine. Officials in Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General" live ordinary life, not allowing even the thought that they are criminals.
The inspector breaks into the mossy, stagnant, but well-established life of the district town, and then it becomes clear that the standards by which he lives are absolute absurdity. The city's rulers are a "gang of robbers." Bribes, in their understanding, are something “ordained by God himself.”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol introduces the viewer into an outwardly ordinary, and therefore very familiar, world. Upon closer inspection, he turned out to be insane. In all its links it was built on lies. It was not Khlestakov who deceived the mayor - the mayor, who built his entire life on lies and deception, deprived himself of the ability to distinguish truth from lies. The central, main lie on which the entire life of Gogol’s officials is built is the conviction that rank, rank, order, money are the meaning of life and its true values, and the person himself, his dignity, rights and talents, happiness and unhappiness, aspiration they have no value for goodness and justice.
Rank, in the mayor’s understanding, is the right to legalized robbery. His logic is simple and straightforward - you can take it, but according to your rank.
Admiration for rank overshadowed the officials of man. Bewitched by the magic of the high rank to which they elevated Khlestakov, they immediately forgot their everyday experience and made Khlestakov into someone he never was.
Gogol’s characterization of officials in The Inspector General is given at the very beginning with the help folk proverb, which served as the epigraph to the comedy: “There is no point in blaming the mirror if your face is crooked.” This capacious image allows us to penetrate into the essence of the multiple “faces” of bureaucracy, as the force that filled the Russian space of the first half of the 19th century and enslaved it. The comedy was supposed to become a kind of “mirror” in which one could see all the nuances of social ugliness. As a true artist, Gogol understood that it was best to indicate the scale of this disaster not by directly condemning it, but by placing it in a context where it would always be accompanied by laughter.
All officials in the auditor are united by an immoderate passion for acquisition, and it does not matter what: money, power, undeserved respect. These are insignificant parts of “little thanks”, so small that they are not worth talking about. Traction Russian society To traditional values gave rise to a situation where it was tradition that bought off one’s conscience. Bribery, as ancient as the world, itself became a world whose laws should be inviolable. In such a world it is easy to deceive and be deceived, which makes honesty seem offensive. The bureaucracy in The Inspector General looks grotesque also because the absurdity of their life is filled with “pretension” and righteous anger: it does not forgive anything or anyone for the disrespectful attitude towards themselves, which should be almost internal to every Russian citizen.
The images of officials in the comedy “The Inspector General” are as funny as they are monstrous, because they are true and widespread in all spheres of the then public life. Mayor Skvoznik-Dmukhatsky, of course, is not stupid, like a gray gelding; he is well aware of the unsightly situation of the inhabitants of his city, the deplorable state of medicine and education. But deriving one’s own benefit prevails over everything for the mayor, and the arrival of the auditor was supposed to block the process of absorbing resources and patching up holes after that. Fear blinds the mayor so much that he mistakes Khlestakov’s cowardice and emptiness for the subtle deceit with which a passing person passes himself off as an inspector. Skvoznik-Dmukhatsky never experiences a feeling of not only guilt, but even awkwardness at the moments when he is “thanked,” because the ghost of supposedly God’s providence has long justified everything. No one dares to go against the divine will, except perhaps some Voltaireans. Among the venerable officials of the district city there should under no circumstances be such a shame. He's not there! The absence of Voltairian shame also frees one from intelligence and education. Ignorance is so invincible that no amount of enlightenment can budge it, like that of a city judge who takes bribes with greyhound puppies for a future hunt. Several books that he read throughout his life “and-send-here-Lyapkin-Tyapkin”, of course, gained him the reputation of a freethinker, but added absolutely nothing to his meager consciousness. He is not only unable to do the job, but also bear responsibility for his judgments, which have long been, and perhaps from the very beginning of his career, abolished by his superiors with something like: “a lot of intelligence is worse than not having one at all.”
Among the officials of the city of N in The Inspector General, Strawberry is clearly visible, who with all zeal takes care of charitable institutions. He is a terrible weasel and knows how to speak to the hearts of those in power, which always ensures him brilliant success. The trustee considers flattery the most indispensable and unmistakable means of penetrating someone else's soul and uses it on the widest scale. He curries favor with both the mayor and Khlestakov, subtly capturing the nature of their pride and fear. The caretaker of the schools, Khlopov, is inferior in flattery to Strawberry; he does it not so skillfully, but with great success he submits complaints to the mayor about teachers who allegedly spread a free spirit among the growing youth, they are too offensively hot and educated. That’s why all the officials from “The Inspector General” are so representative, so brilliant in their stubbornness, because each of them is part of a bribery system that kills everything human, original and reasonable.
The images of officials in the comedy “The Inspector General” are complemented by such characters as Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, roguish gossips who are in an endless search for amazing news. They scurry through the whole comedy as pampers and buffoons, whom no one cares about, but they endure everything - for the opportunity to be the first to find out an interesting incident, no matter what it concerns. One of them always accompanies the mayor to Khlestakov, then showers himself with pleasantries in front of Anna Andreevna, or obsequiously stutters in front of the auditor. Ultimately, in all guises they do not change, demonstrating the lowest level of mental poverty and insignificance - a petty official who, due to his position, is affectionate, but if you put power in his hands, he will tear anyone to pieces. Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky themselves experience almost pleasure from the awe of power, for “fear still pervades you when you speak with a nobleman,” and this fear does not seem humiliating at all. It is perceived as a source of low pleasure.
And, finally, Khlestakov himself is an embodied clerical emptiness, who lost at cards and, due to circumstances, took on the role of an auditor. Khlestakov is subject to filling by his very nature, so it doesn’t matter to him who he will be in the next moment, because the mayor’s intentions do not immediately reach his consciousness. He accepts admiration and generously gives everyone his attention as a person who does not need to be told about his irresistibility. His threats are funny and boyish, but this is precisely what arouses Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky’s suspicion, and then confidence - this newcomer is simply skillfully cunning, he is the auditor!
In these relations we see the end point of the absurdity of the bureaucratic world: fear of the powerful force paralyzes a person, makes substitution possible and gives prosperity to ignorance. Only cleansing laughter can help you break out of this circle - the only positive character in Gogol's comedy.
Work test
“The Inspector General” - comedy by N.V. Gogol. As the author himself wrote, he wanted to show and, at the same time, ridicule all the shortcomings of officialdom and the injustice that reigns in remote places in Russia. The comedy reveals all the “sins” of city officials who are trying to hide them from the auditor who is supposed to visit them. N.V. Gogol does not introduce a separate main character into his work; he draws the image of each official, describing the shortcomings of the political system.
The mayor appears before us as a man who is not stupid, but long years service accustomed to deceive and steal. The character himself admits that no one can deceive him, but he has dexterously deceived not a single governor. Anton Antonovich takes into his pocket the money that was allocated for the needs of the city. The mayor knows about all the “dark things” that are going on in the city. But he justifies this by saying that all people are sinners by nature. He conducts a preventive conversation with his subordinates so that before the arrival of the auditor, they hide all the shortcomings. He wants to curry favor with his superiors, but he doesn’t care about solving the city’s problems.
Other bosses are in no way inferior to the mayor. Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin is a scoundrel who tries to serve his superiors in everything. He loves hunting and takes bribes with greyhound puppies. Regarding healthcare in the city, he says that even expensive medicines will not help a person who is destined to die, so there is no need to spend money from the city treasury on them.
Khlopov - caretaker educational institutions. He is afraid of various checks and constantly complains about how hard his service is.
Shpekin, who takes the place of the postmaster, opens letters to unknown recipients. He justifies this activity by saying that he wants to find out what interesting things are happening.
The entire city leadership is involved in bribery. They don't care about the lives of ordinary residents. They put themselves above them and run the city as they please. Officials do not look at the law and the needs of residents. When the news comes about the arrival of the auditor, the officials are not particularly worried; they try to outwardly cover up their misdeeds, but they understand that the problem can be solved through a bribe. This is not the first time the auditor visits the city and the authorities know how to behave and what to say in order to get away with it. After all, they serve in their ranks and rule the city for many years, and they get away with everything. Through bribery, lies, and naked flattery, they remain in their places even after various checks.
The leading people talk about their misdeeds and tell several stories from the life of the city. And thanks to this it develops full picture what is happening in the Russian provinces. The authorities rule the city without permission, take bribes, and often gossip and write denunciations. The rights of citizens are infringed, living conditions are terrible, and the administration turns a blind eye to this. The life of the districts and provinces is reflected in the play by N.V. Gogol. The author exposes all the features of the Russian system.
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