Option 2
Gogol laughs, like Pushkin, who gave him the idea for this work, at prudence, cowardice and stupidity. I think so!
The prudence is that all relationships are built not on good feelings, on the desire to do work, but on personal interest! Everyone acts in their own interests... There is no real friendship, love, or even sympathy here, just pretense! Everyone becomes godparents, gets married out of a desire to achieve a position, money... That is, they put everything external above human feelings. And here are simple schemes: I will help him here, then he should help me there.
Cowardice, of course, is also present. She pushes officials to weave intrigues, to cover up their laziness, so that they all do not get fired. (They can even exile to Siberia!) Only fear could push them to see in Khlestakov a serious person - an auditor. “No matter what happens” is the motto of these people.
Stupidity is everywhere here too! Stupid officials, ladies, ordinary men, Khlestakov himself... And everyone wants to pretend that they are very smart and important. But still, the very stupid Khlestakov managed to deceive the officials, although they themselves invented his story. His servant Osip, although simple, is not made of him as a sufferer and a storehouse of folk wisdom, he is also very stupid, he also “shows off.” He is nothing of himself, just like his owner, but only wants to show how “cool” he is.
I think that Nikolai Vasilyevich laughs more at bad people, but not at the system. On the contrary, he believes in a good auditor - a representative of the authorities who can fix everything, punish the guilty, and do the right thing. But in the work itself, all the characters are funny, the good ones are somewhere behind the scenes. Basically, here the writer collected all the negative characters in order to ridicule them. To put it nicely, Gogol laughs at vices - at the bad qualities of the characters that have already completely absorbed them. You won’t see anything good in that same mayor... He has become some kind of caricature! Like them all.
I also laugh with Nikolai Vasilyevich! A very good work in the school curriculum.
Other works: ← Mirage intrigue in the comedy The Inspector General↑ GogolCharacteristics of the mayor and Khlestakov from The Inspector General →
What is N.V. laughing at? Gogol in the comedy "The Inspector General"
Gogol’s world-famous comedy “The Inspector General” was written “at the suggestion” of A.S. Pushkin. It is believed that it was he who told the great Gogol the story that formed the basis of the plot of The Inspector General.
It must be said that the comedy was not immediately accepted - both in the literary circles of that time and at the royal court. Thus, the emperor saw in The Inspector General an “unreliable work” that criticized the state structure of Russia. And only after personal requests and explanations from V. Zhukovsky, the play was allowed to be staged in the theater.
What was the “unreliability” of the “Inspector General”? Gogol depicted in it a district town typical of Russia at that time, its orders and laws that were established by officials there. These “sovereign people” were called upon to equip the city, improve life, and make life easier for its citizens. However, in reality, we see that officials strive to make life easier and improve only for themselves, completely forgetting about their official and human “responsibilities.”
The head of the district town is his “father” - mayor Anton Antonovich Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky. He considers himself entitled to do whatever he wants - take bribes, steal government money, inflict unjust reprisals on the townspeople. As a result, the city turns out to be dirty and poor, there is disorder and lawlessness going on here; it’s not for nothing that the mayor is afraid that when the inspector arrives, he will be denounced: “Oh, wicked people! And so, scammers, I think they are preparing requests under the counter.” Even the money sent for the construction of the church was stolen by officials into their own pockets: “If they ask why a church was not built at a charitable institution, for which the amount was allocated a year ago, then do not forget to say that it began to be built, but burned down. I submitted a report about this.”
The author notes that the mayor is “a very intelligent person in his own way.” He began to make a career from the very bottom, achieving his position on his own. In this regard, we understand that Anton Antonovich is a “child” of the corruption system that has developed and is deeply rooted in Russia.
The rest of the officials of the district city match their boss - judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, trustee of charitable institutions Zemlyanika, superintendent of schools Khlopov, postmaster Shpekin. All of them are not averse to putting their hand into the treasury, “profiting” from a bribe from a merchant, stealing what is intended for their charges, and so on. In general, “The Inspector General” paints a picture of Russian officials “universally” evading true service to the Tsar and the Fatherland, which should be the duty and matter of honor of a nobleman.
But the “social vices” in the heroes of “The Inspector General” are only part of their human appearance. All characters are also endowed with individual shortcomings, which become a form of manifestation of their universal human vices. We can say that the meaning of the characters depicted by Gogol is much larger than their social position: the heroes represent not only the district bureaucracy or the Russian bureaucracy, but also “man in general,” who easily forgets about his duties to people and God.
So, in the mayor we see an imperious hypocrite who firmly knows what his benefit is. Lyapkin-Tyapkin is a grumpy philosopher who loves to demonstrate his learning, but flaunts only his lazy, clumsy mind. Strawberry is a “earphone” and a flatterer, covering up his “sins” with other people’s “sins”. Most officials in Khlestakov’s letter are fond of peeping “through the keyhole.”
Thus, in Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General” we see a portrait of Russian bureaucracy. We see that these people, called to be a support for their Fatherland, are in fact its destroyers, destroyers. They care only about their own good, while forgetting about all moral and ethical laws.
Gogol shows that officials are victims of the terrible social system that has developed in Russia. Without noticing it themselves, they lose not only their professional qualifications, but also their human appearance - and turn into monsters, slaves of the corrupt system.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, in our time this comedy by Gogol is also extremely relevant. By and large, nothing has changed in our country - the bureaucracy and officialdom have the same face - the same vices and shortcomings - as two hundred years ago. This is probably why “The Inspector General” is so popular in Russia and still does not leave theater stages.
“There’s no point in blaming the mirror...”
In The Inspector General, Gogol made his contemporaries laugh at what they were accustomed to and what they stopped noticing - carelessness in spiritual life. Remember how the Governor and Ammos Fedorovich talked about sin? The mayor emphasizes that there is no such thing as a person without sins: this is how God himself created it, and there is no guilt in a person for this. When the Governor is hinted at his own sins, he immediately remembers both faith and God, and even manages to notice and condemn that Ammos Fedorovich rarely goes to Church.
The mayor's attitude towards the service is formal. For him, she is a means to humiliate his subordinates and receive an undeserved bribe. But power was not given to people by God so that they could do whatever they wanted. Danger! Only danger forces the Governor to remember what he has already forgotten. The fact that he is actually just a forced official who must serve the people, and not his own whims. But does the Governor think about repentance, does he bring, even in his heart, sincere regret for what he has done? Voropaev notes that Gogol wanted to show us the Mayor, who seemed to have fallen into a vicious circle of his sinfulness: in his repentant reflections, the sprouts of new sins arise unnoticed by him (the merchants will pay for the candle, not he).
Nikolai Vasilyevich described in great detail what respect, imaginary honor and fear of superiors are for people who love power. The heroes of the play go to great lengths to somehow improve their position in the eyes of the imaginary auditor. The mayor even decided to give his own daughter to Khlestakov, whom he had known for only one day. And Khlestakov, who has finally assumed the role of auditor, himself sets the price of the “debt”, which “saves” city officials from imaginary punishment.
Gogol portrayed Khlestakov as a kind of fool who first speaks and then begins to think. Very strange things are happening to Khlestakov. When he starts telling the truth, they don’t believe him at all or try not to listen to him at all. But when he starts lying to everyone's face, they show a lot of interest in him. Voropaev compares Khlestakov with the image of a demon, a petty rogue. The petty official Khlestakov, having accidentally become a big boss and received undeserved honor, exalts himself over everyone and condemns everyone in a letter to his friend.
Gogol revealed such a number of low human qualities not in order to give his comedy a more amusing look, but so that people could discern them in themselves. And not just to see, but to think about your life, your soul.
