The Government Inspector Analysis

The Government Inspector: In Falsehood, We Trust Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector is a satirical play taking place in Russia during the nineteenth century. In the Government Inspector, harmonious and fantastical facades were created by the mayor, a representation of the town as a whole, and pseudo-inspector in order to deceive one another. The multitude of facades leads to a further diminution of morality. Ultimately, the privation of morals that not only detriments the psyche of a person to the point of blasphemy, but forces the character to find and amend one’s self.
In a quaint town located in Russia during the nineteenth century, the mayor, otherwise known as Anton Antonvich, receives an unsettling letter that an inspector belonging to a higher societal status will be traveling through the town, incognito. This strikes fear into Antonvich’s heart because he recognizes that he is guilty for unjust practices, such as bribery, and being an incompetent mayor who does not maintain the responsibilities that his position encompasses. Upon receiving the letter, the superintendent of school asks why their town has been the target of an incognito investigation and the mayor states, “Why! It’s clear why. Fate! (sighs) so far, they’ve been snooping around other towns. Now it’s our turn.” (Gogol 56). The diction of “fate” is crucial in terms of displaying the guilty conscious of the mayor; he deems the arrival of the inspector to be stressful due to the fast he has been unable to keep the town in a pristine condition and that is now coming back to haunt him and remind him of his absence of morals.
Upon the arrival of the pseudo-inspector named Khlestakov, a chain of facades were set off into motion, both by the townspeople and the ...

... middle of paper ...

... motives, but eventually losing themselves along the process and forcing them to reflect upon what is and isn’t just.
Gogol’s, The Government Inspector, was indeed a battle of the facades that were fought in harmony; the fronts created by the characters were compatible with one another and only led to development of the facades. Somewhere along this process, the lack of moral responsibility was abused and, ultimately, the loss of self-perseverance. Jose Ortega Y Gasset once said, “Indeed it is of the essence of man...that he can lose himself in the jungle of his existence, within himself, and thanks to his sensation of being can react by setting energetically to work to find himself again.” Human nature has the ability to lose itself under many circumstances, yet this is the only time when one can propagate and discover the true meaning of what it means to be human.