Shalamov Vs Gogol

Between all the 20th century Russian literary work, “The Injector” wrote by Shalamov shared a similar writing method to Gogol’s famous work “The Nose”. Both Gogol and Shalamov personalized an object and used the object to satirize the society. Although it seemed like both Gogol and Shalamov satirized the opposite different society (Tsar vs. Communists), they were actually ridiculed the same aspect of Russian ideology, the idea of progress. When talking about deeper implication, Gogal cared about the universal world, whereas Shalamov focused particularly on the society. In “the Nose”, Gogol described Kovalyov’s nose as a real person. Mr. Nose was same as a person, who was “wore a gold-embroidered uniform with a stiff, high collar, trousers

For the reason, that Gogol, on the one hand, was criticized Tsar’s ranking system. On the other hand, Shalamov was made fun of Communist ideology. The Communist idea about sharing the major public goods was on the opposite side of Tsar’s monarchism. The ranking system was part of the typical symbols of Tsar period. When Kovalyov wanted to talk with Mr. Nose, he asked himself: “How can I get it?” (Gogol 6) Though he was talked with his nose, “the uniform, the hat, and so on” (Gogol 6) scared him, because state-councillor was a higher ranking officer. Unlike Tsar period which people are divided into the group based on their social ranking, Communist in the 20th century advocated an equal ranking. Shalamov mocked the communist indulged in making an unreachable goal. In Shalamov’s perspective, the whole society was stuck in the stupid goal and did not even take time thinking about whether their plan was reasonable or not. As the narrator said in the report “The chief engineer doesn’t pay any attention and just demands his cubic meter of soil”

It’s clear that for Shalamov, Russian society, or say the communist country was a whole society moved toward a plan and regardless all the problems in the way. “Plan for area can’t be fulfilled” (Shalamov). The workers worked in extreme weather: it was “six degrees below zero” and “spit froze in the mid-air”(Shalamov). Workers worked “six-hour period” with “no place to warm up” (Shalamov). Nevertheless, no one cared about them. The director wrote the report not to fight for the workers for a better working condition, but to convict a broken machine that could not make productive and was put off their plan. “Convict Injector is to be placed under arrest for three days without permission to return to work” (Shalamov). In this case, since the machine can make better progress, it’s more important than