Looking at Gogol and Tolstoy: What Makes a Writer a Realist?

Looking at Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych and Three Death, as well as Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose and The Overcoat, we notice many differences between them. I will compare Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych and Three Death to Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose and The Overcoat, in order to show why I consider L. Tolstoy a realist, whereas N. Gogol is not a realist.

In order to prove that Gogol is not a realist, but Tolstoy is, I will look at what both authors do with the plot, characters, language, and humor. One would expect a realistic writing to be structured in such a way that, by reading it, we can envision the identities of the characters and their ordinary lives as people who we meet in real life. There has to be a one-to-one relationship between the signified object in the book and the subject it represents in life. 

The plot of Gogol’s The Nose, appears to be realistic because, in the 19th century, it is possible to meet a person who is looking for something in St. Petersburg. However it is what he is looking for that is not real. Collegiate assessor Kovalev is the person who had his nose cut off, by the barber, Ivan Yakovlevitch. The reader knows that Ivan Yakovlevitch is a barber and that Kovalev is a collegiate assessor, we also know that both of them live in St. Petersburg, which makes it look realistic because both of them have a profession in life. Although, knowing their professions does not lead us anywhere because one would have to know much more about it than, simply, the title. 

However, the fact that Ivan had cut off Kolvalev’s nose and the nose was wearing clothes, running around on the streets of St. Petersburg trying to get away from his owner, and, actually talking, makes it very unrealistic. For example, “My dear sir, you speak in error,” was [the nose’s] reply. “I am just myself—myself separately.”