The Government Inspector Essay Questions

Are there any real heroes or villains in the text? If so, who are they? If not, why not?

Most critics agree that there are no real heroes or villains in the text. Khlestakov is a charlatan and a fake, prone to selfishness and debauchery. However, while he enjoys laughing at the expense of the townspeople, he certainly isn't evil. The civil servants are inept, self-interested, and corrupt, but they have recognizable foibles. Critic Milton Ehre sums this up: "Neither virtuous nor evil, the characters of Gogol's comic works...are merely ridiculous. They reside in a halfway house between redemption and damnation—a comic purgatory." This element of the play helps to make the characters realistic in such a way that audience members may feel compelled to see aspects of themselves reflected onstage, prompting self-reflection upon the play's silent conclusion.

How does the play depict the performative nature of Khlestakov and the Mayor? What is the effect of this performative nature on the broader ecosystem of the story?

One of the fascinating layers of the play is that the main characters of Khlestakov and the Mayor are inclined toward performance, even as they are already being portrayed by literal actors for the sake of an audience. The two of them, as well as the minor characters, are part of an illusion. Ehre calls the conversations between Khlestakov and the Mayor duets of a sort, "ballet-like dances of pretense." All of Khlestakov's words are performative, and they are taken as such. The comic routines "are built on this principle: the mayor putting on a show while taking Khlestakov's pedestrian responses for merely another show." An example of this is when the Mayor is bragging of how well he treats his people, as opposed to other mayors, and Khlestakov responds that he is glad for the good treatment because he does not know how he'd pay his bill. The Mayor thinks to himself that this is an act because, of course, he'd be able to pay. Overall, "the characters of the play rush after an illusion—the false inspector—and when they catch up with him, they metamorphose into illusory characters, masked selves performing stylized rituals of impersonation."

What is the core message of this play? Is it comedic? Why or why not?

Though this is certainly a comedy and the audience will have a delightful time laughing at the mistaken identity, ridiculous behavior, and amusing comeuppance of the bureaucrats, Gogol did not approach his topic lightly. The play invites the audience to take a deeper, serious look at themselves. Are they guilty of selfishness, shortsightedness, or greed? Have they just been coasting on luck to get by? Are they too consumed with money, status, power, or reputation? Are they ignoring what is really in front of them? As a religious man, Gogol may have wanted his audience to take stock of themselves in order to prepare themselves for the final religious Judgment.

What is the narrative function of the mute scene at the end of the play?

The final, minute-and-a-half mute scene ensures that the audience will most certainly feel uncomfortable—but that discomfort is intended to provoke them to some inward reflection. It is a pictorial tableau, a veritable painting, and, in its visuality, it imparts the message that the characters onstage are simply versions of ourselves that we must analyze in order to reform our bad behavior.

What are the different characteristics of bureaucrats that Gogol satirizes?

Gogol puts a panoply of negative characteristics on display, and all of them are easily recognizable in the people we know (meaning, his characters are not murderers or rapists; they are relatable in their foibles). The Mayor is concerned with his reputation and power, and he doesn't mind taken advantage of the shopkeepers to increase his standard of living. His wife is greedy for riches and to move about the fashionable set, is rude to her daughter, and seems obsessed with her own perceived charms. The Judge neglects his job in favor of hunting. The Warden of Charities and Doctor do not care for their patients, simply concluding that they only need minimal treatment and will get better on their own. The constables are drunken and disorderly. The Postmaster invades people's privacy. All in all, this is a banal and sordid bunch of bureaucrats that Gogol's audience would find all too recognizable.