The Nose by Gogol

1. What does Ivan Yakovlevich do for a living?

2. What does Ivan find in a loaf of bread?

3. How does his wife respond to Ivan's discovery?

4. What does Ivan set out to accomplish?

5. When Ivan tosses the "package" in the river, for a brief moment he is happy; then he is arrested. What does this scene suggest about the role of happiness in Ivan's life/community/society?

6. Where does the title object belong, and how does it finally get there?



1. Ivan Yakovlevich is a barber.

2. Ivan finds a nose in his loaf of bread.

3. His wife doesn't find out because Yakovlevich tries to get rid of it as soon as he can.

4. Ivan sets out to throw away the nose of his regular customer in the river.

5. This scene suggests that the period of happiness is short lived.

6. The title object belongs on its owner's face ( Major Kovalyov). It finally gets there when he asks for a "curse" to be removed from him, and when Kovalyov wakes up sometime later, his noce is back on his face.