Examine the use of satire in The Government Inspector.

The play directly satirizes the complexity and mind-numbing inefficiency of 19th-century Russian bureaucracy, but it has been adapted to become a universal indictment of the hoops that must be jumped through to achieve any sort of satisfaction when dealing with a government office. The infamous red tape that characterizes any bloated hierarchical system is transformed here into an allegorical commentary about the tyranny existing throughout Tsarist Russia as the petty bureaucrats purposely engage the machinery of delay and denial to reign like demi-gods over their localized domains.

The focus of the play’s satire is the corruption of petty bureaucrats, but within that focus is a much larger target. The bureaucratic system becomes a symbol of all systems upon which societies depend to meet their needs. That those needs must be met lends those who can meet them tremendous power and with the power to give always comes the power to corrupt. The intricacies of bureaucratic tyranny are thus extrapolated to apply even beyond the specific target of Russian society under the yoke of a corrupt Tsar.