What is laughter in the Comedy Auditor. "Laughter is the honest and noble face of comedy

N.V. Gogol in his comedy "The Inspector General" shows officials only from the negative side, exposing all their vices. A question arises, which is difficult to answer unequivocally: is there at least one positive hero in this play? Sam N.V. Gogol believed that the only positive character in comedy is laughter: "I'm sorry that no one noticed the honest face that was in my play. ... ... This honest, noble face was laughter."

According to N.V.

Gogol, when conceiving The Inspector General, he "decided to put together everything bad in Russia." But for what purpose? First of all, the writer wanted to ridicule such vices of Russian officials as embezzlement, servility and cowardice. And he did it, because the comedy came out "funnier than the devil."

The most interesting thing is that the laughter in this play is different in character: in some episodes it is jokingly good-natured, but there is also bitter irony and grotesque. It would be a mistake to believe that the play "The Government Inspector" was written to make the reader laugh. On the contrary, it calls for reflection on many things.

The author puts his characters in situations where they show the worst, most disgusting of their properties. And the first of these heroes is Khlestakov. As soon as he gets into an atmosphere of general sycophancy, he shows himself "in all its glory."

He takes bribes, impudently dragging along behind the wife and daughter of the Governor. Khlestakov lies so that he becomes ashamed of him. He begins to act arrogant and cheeky.

And the mayor, who no longer understands anything from fear and mutters that the non-commissioned officer's wife "whipped herself"? And Bobchinsky, turning to Khlestakov with a request to inform the tsar that "Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky lives in such and such a city"? All these people are pathetic, insignificant and deserve nothing but contempt.

But why is there not a single one in the "Revizor" positive character? the main objective N.V. Gogol - to put the vices of officials on public display, to the ridicule of the whole world, because all this is the most formidable punitive court. In the society described by the author, there is nowhere for a positive hero to appear.

So laughter for N.V. Gogol is a means of moral correction of people. And since he can be called a comedy character, he is the only good character in it. Laughter affirms the triumph of truth, honesty and justice.

Updated: 2017-12-18

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Essay text:

If you laugh, it's better to laugh hard and at what is really worthy of universal ridicule,
N. Gogol
The comedy "The Government Inspector", written by N.V. Gogol, undoubtedly belongs not only to the classics of world drama, but also to works that capture the reader from the first moment and do not let go of his attention until the last page. The plot of the comedy was prompted to Gogol by A. S. Pushkin, who highly valued the literary talent of the young writer with his "ability to guess a person and with a few features to suddenly expose him as if he were alive."
The comedy created by Gogol is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Its goal is not only to entertain the reader with a witty joke that fate played with the officials of the city of N, but also to make him think about himself, about his environment.
In Gogol's immortal work, in fact, there is very little invented. Using the example of a small county town, Gogol managed to show what was characteristic of the entire vast Russia of that time: servility, bribery, careerism, embezzlement, arbitrariness of officials. Thus, the situation described in the comedy could have arisen in almost any city.
A whole gallery of Russian hips was brought to the stage by Gogol in his comedy. The behavior of officials sometimes seems infinitely funny, whose images Gogol created with a fair amount of irony. It is impossible to forget the dodgy careerist mayor, who never misses his advantage and is used to grabbing everything that floats into his hands. The "freethinker" judge Lyap-kin-Tyapkin is described with great humor, confident in his infallibility because he takes bribes with greyhound puppies. A bitter smile is evoked by the image of the trustee of the charitable establishments of Strawberry, in whose hospital people are not only malnourished and dirty, but also "die like flies" due to lack of medicines.
But Khlestakov himself is on stage! Lazy and a slacker, an unrestrained braggart and a liar, well, how can one take this seriously! However, city officials accept him as a "public servant". Why not the auditor: look down, speak beautifully, take bribes, tell the unprecedented. A famous and respected man, this Khlestakov!
Thus, we clearly see that the comedy "The Inspector General" is not fiction, not slander on contemporary writer life, but its reflection. Those whom this comedy angered most of all, I would like to direct to the very beginning, to the epigraph, which is Gogol's worthy answer to his cries: "There is nothing to blame on the mirror if the face is crooked."
If you look closely, you can see that in comedy there is no goodie. I evaluate and think about the actions and deeds of the characters themselves, the viewers and readers. The narrow-mindedness, stupidity, opportunism of city officials cause laughter, and this laughter is the only "honest face" in comedy, because it connects the action on stage with a lively response from the audience.
"What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself! .." say the mayor to the hall at the behest of the author.
Gogol achieved his goal "to collect in one heap everything bad in Russia ... and to laugh at everything at once." But the writer does not laugh alone, he laughs with us, and this is the power of comedy.
After reading The Government Inspector, I will never forget the meaning of the words of the great Gogol: “Oh, laughter is a great thing! A person is afraid of nothing more than laughter. It does not take away either life or property from the guilty; but it binds his strength, and Fearing laughter, a person is restrained from what no power would have kept him from ... "

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In his "Petersburg Notes of 1836" N.V. Gogol complained about the scarcity of the repertoire of the contemporary Russian theater, that melodramas and vaudevilles were mainly performed on the stage, and complained about the lack of a real Russian comedy repertoire. His comedy The Inspector General was intended to at least partially fill this vacuum. The plot of the comedy, suggested by A. S. Pushkin, was embodied in the play "The Government Inspector". In it, the playwright, with all the power of a diatribe, fell upon the world of evil and violence, showing the entire state bureaucracy of Russia at that time. The play was created in just two months. And already in April 1836, its premiere took place. The comedy was a resounding success. It was a work new and original in every respect. Its novelty consisted primarily in the fact that there was no positive hero in the comedy. Indeed, there are no positive heroes on the stage. But the author himself emphasized that a positive hero is present in The Inspector General. And this goodie is laughter. Laughter that scourges and exposes. But this is laughter through tears.

Gogol's comedy is hilariously funny: it really came out "funnier than the devil," as the playwright promised Pushkin. But, like an Undercurrent, a woeful, languishing, dreary feeling is born in The Inspector General; it rises the higher, the more carefree and lighter the comedy's laughter seems. And finally, in the last, “silent scene”, it breaks out, falling - both on the actors and on the audience - in a powerful wave. Could it be expected that the play, which began as a comedy - the mayor's story about two rats of "unnatural size", the fussy preparations of officials for the reception of the auditor, would end tragically - a terrible stupor of "the whole group"? In his immortal comedy, Gogol showed living everyday images in all their diversity. “For God's sake, give us Russian characters, give us ourselves, give us our rogues, our eccentrics! To their stage, to the laughter of everyone! - exclaimed Gogol, and in the "Inspector General" "Russian rogues" and "eccentrics" were presented in full - vividly and figuratively. Here is the mayor - Anton Antonovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, and the postmaster Shpekin, judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin and superintendent of schools Luka Lukich Khlopov, trustee of charitable institutions Strawberry, local landowners Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, policemen Svistunov, Buttons and Derzhimorda. Already some of their names cause laughter, but bitter laughter, because they all justify their names, correspondingly referring to their official duties. Judge Ammos Fedorovich conducts cases in court very badly - a blunder, a Derzhimorda policeman - beats the townspeople with or without reason. And so on.

And all of them, waiting for the auditor, get into a comical situation. The essence of the play's comedic conflict is that the mayor and officials are fighting with a ghost that they created in their imagination (after all, the imaginary auditor is not an auditor at all). But the narrow-minded Khlestakov managed to deceive and deftly deceive both the highly experienced, intelligent mayor and all his officials.

In The Inspector General there is not even a hint that somewhere, in some distant or near corner of the vast Russian state, life does not proceed as in the city described by Gogol, according to other laws and rules. Everything in the play appears as generally accepted. terrible, gloomy picture. But at the end of the comedy, the famous silent scene, Gogol's thought about the coming retribution, the hope for the triumph of justice and law in the face of a real auditor is expressed.

Gogol hoped that laughter, the voice of satire, the power of ridicule, the nobility of humor would be able to make honest and decent people out of the mayor and the headman. Evil, at first glance, the lines of his comedy were dictated by love for Russia, faith in its better future. Angrily laughing at the negative phenomena of life, Gogol makes the reader think about them, understand their causes and try to get rid of them. That is why the comedy "The Inspector General" has not lost its relevance today. And laughter, as always, helps us to endure in difficult times.

1. Goodie comedy - laughter.
2. "The Government Inspector" portrays the comic truth of life.
3. The role and place of comedy in Gogol's work.
N. V. Gogol, responding to critics’ reproaches that there was not a single positive person in the play The Inspector General, wrote: “I am sorry that no one noticed the honest person who was in my play; this honest, noble face was - laughter. And then Gogol acts as his defender: “No, laughter is more significant and deeper than people think. Not the laughter that is generated by temporary irritability, a bilious, sickly disposition of character; not that light laughter, which serves for the idle entertainment and amusement of people, but that laughter that all emanates from the bright nature of man. It is this kind of laughter that Gogol evokes with his "Inspector General".
The plot of the play is based on a comedic situation: a person, against his will, is taken not for who he really is. Khlestakov was not going to pretend to be an auditor, but the officials saw him as an auditor because of his sincerity and unintentional actions. It was this feature of Khlestakov that confused everyone, and then Khlestakov himself entered the role and “played around”.
In one of his letters to Zhukovsky, Gogol admits that his laughter “at first was good-natured,” but, hearing that “entire estates and classes of society” were angry with him, Gogol finally thought: “If the power of laughter is so great that they are afraid of it therefore, it should not be wasted. Gogol immediately explains the origin of The Inspector General: “I decided to collect all the bad things that I knew and laugh at everything at once.”
Gogol laughs at the inhabitants county town, over their vices, over the whole city as a whole and over the current situation itself. The Inspector General is a comedy of characters and a comedy of positions. Not only the situation itself is funny, the characters themselves are also funny. All characters they take their work very seriously, but we understand the emptiness and worthlessness of their concerns. Ridiculous situations are also funny when the mayor, out of excitement and haste, confuses words and makes complete nonsense, offering everyone to “pick up the street”, and a minute later, instead of a hat, he wants to put on a paper case. The guards, with whom the mayor points to a piece of paper lying on the floor, "run and take it off, pushing each other in a hurry." Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky approach Anna Andreevna at the same time and clash their foreheads. All this is insanely funny, but we understand that these funny pictures- only a background to the main satirical motif.
Gogol laughs at "the discrepancy between the characters of people and their position in society, at the discrepancy between what the characters think and what they say, between people's behavior and their opinion." Officials with their wives, who came to congratulate the mayor and his wife on a wonderful party for their daughter, flatter and admire in the eyes, and behind the eyes they call the mayor a pig.
It is known that Pushkin, listening to Gogol reading " Dead Souls”, laughed a lot and sincerely, but “began to become more and more gloomy, gloomier, and, finally, became completely gloomy. When the reading was over, he said in a voice of anguish: My God, how sad is our Russia. The same goes for the Inspector. The Molva magazine, which was the first to respond to the appearance in print of an early edition of the play, understood one of the main values ​​of Gogol's work: comedy is funny

outside, but inside it is "woe-mourning, girded with a bast, tangled with bast."
Laughing at the negative phenomena of life, Gogol makes you think about them, realize all their harmfulness and try to get rid of them. In any case, the "Inspector General" could not but play a significant role in the development of public consciousness. The enormous accusatory power with which Gogol uncovered the sores of society made The Inspector General a work of great ideological value. Clothed in immaculate art form, comedy has become one of the masterpieces of world drama,
V. G. Belinsky successfully defined Gogol’s ability to depict life: everything in the play is “more than a portrait or a mirror of reality, but more like reality than reality looks like itself, for all this is artistic reality, closing in to itself all the particular phenomena of such reality.
What happened in comedy brought out the true ugly and funny Face people, caused laughter over them, over their lives and the life of all of Russia. “What are you laughing at? Laugh at yourself!" - these words are addressed directly to the laughing auditorium.

Laughter is the only honest face in Gogol's comedy "The Government Inspector"

The thirties of the last century - the time of the most fruitful and intense creative flowering of Gogol. Following "Evenings", "Mirgorod", "Arabesques", he turns to dramaturgy and creates one of the most remarkable works of world literature - the immortal "Inspector". In this comedy, chivalric-bureaucratic Russia, a police-autocratic system based on servility, bribery, abuse and oppression, are put to shame. In the words of the writer himself, he "decided to put together everything bad in Russia ... all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where justice is most required of a person, and at one time laugh at everything."

The very course of the play is built in a peculiar and new way. Khlestakov does not yet appear in the first act. But the whole atmosphere of fear of expectation, fear that unseemly deeds and abuses of the mayor and other officials will be discovered, determine further development actions, the possibility of future mistakes. "With what force, with what simplicity, with what ingenious economy, the play begins!" - wrote the famous theatrical figure V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. The plot of the "Inspector" is given already in the first phrase: "I invited you, gentlemen, in order to inform you of the unpleasant news: the auditor is coming to visit us." And already this phrase gives the main impetus to the whole action - the emergence of fear, which clouded the mind of the mayor. Behind the comical, almost vaudeville plot in The Inspector General there is always an unattractive and harsh reality, one can feel the dramatic tension that was so sharply expressed in the finale, in the "silent scene". comic effect based on a misunderstanding. Each of the characters, under the influence of fear, misinterprets the words of the other. And so it is in all comedy: a lie is taken for truth, and the truth is taken for a lie. Not only Khlestakov lies uncontrollably, both the mayor and Strawberry lie recklessly, trying to present themselves and the case "entrusted" to their observation in at its best In Khlestakov, they personified punishing "rock", retribution for all their unrighteous mercenary activities, and they pretend, dodge, lie. In the mayor's house, Khlestakov's character is revealed in fullness. He takes care of both the daughter and the wife of the mayor, is declared the groom of Marya Antonovna and disappears as quickly as he appeared. "Khlestakov's character," Belinsky will say, "... unfolds completely, reveals itself to the last semblance of its microscopic pettiness and gigantic vulgarity." which has not yet taken a concrete expression, representing only a dream of a just and reasonable structure of society.

Gogol did not bring out a "positive hero" in his comedy. He wrote in The Theater Journey: “Yes, if at least one honest person were placed in a comedy and placed with all the fascination, then everyone would go over to the side of this honest person and would completely forget about those who so frightened them now". The positive beginning in The Inspector General is laughter, which embodies that lofty moral and social ideal, and is that "honest face" that determines the meaning of the comedy.

"Laughter" in "The Government Inspector" is imbued with faith in the "bright nature of man", in the spiritual forces of the people, opposing those forces of social stagnation, soullessness, selfishness, which are embodied in the characters of the play in a comic and ugly form. "Silent scene", completing the comic action tragic ending, affirms the triumph of "justice", the triumph of the highest moral principle.