“Loose Packaging”
The bulk of Zoshchenko’s satirical arrows are directed toward life during Soviet bureaucratic wartime. This story proves that there is much to satirize as the irony begins with the opening lines and then twists toward an ending that may not be what is expected. Here is the opening:
“These days there’s no bribery. Before though, you couldn’t go anywhere without giving or taking something.
But now people’s morality has changed significantly for the better.
There really isn’t bribery these days.”
The insistence upon the lack of bribery in modern Russia would quite naturally lead one to expect that the irony will arrive in the form of revealing the extent to which bribery actually does still exist. The author proves ironic even in his choice of irony as the real target isn’t bribery, but whether the adoption of morality always necessarily constitutes a change for the better.
“The Lady Aristocrat”
One of the author’s most well-known stories presents a case of a much more subtly intended and communicated form of irony, while it also comes equipped with a little bonus of irony. The story opens with the narrator saying, “Fellows, I don’t like dames who wear hats” and then ends with him saying “I don’t like lady aristocrats.” From this beginning to this end, it might seem as thought he story is pursuing a simple vein of ironic reversal. In fact, it is through the language that the irony is conveyed that this man with distinct set of likes and dislikes is merely expressing a preference for or against certain things about on an uncritically engaged inculcation into socialist propaganda. As for the actual events taking place, he is subsumed into the brainwash that he completely misreads everything and as a result fails to realize the lesson he might learn.
“The History of an Illness”
Once again, the target of the author’s irony is bureaucratic mishandling. The story opens with the narrator saying he prefers to be ill at home rather than go to the hospital. Of course, the irony commences with the narrator going to the hospital where he is submitted to an ever-increasing series of events which perfectly illuminate his preference to be sick at home. The final irony seems to come at the end when his wife reveals that the hospital had mistaken him for another patient which had died. But there is one last ironic cherry on the sundae: he says he had a mind to rush to the hospital and give them a good going over for this mistake, but when he started feeling a little sick he remembered what happened to people who go to the hospital and changed his mind.
“The Dictaphone”
The irony of this little slice of Soviet literature comes at America’s expense. The opening lines are steeped in ironic flattery which the knowing reader senses is a set-up:
“Say what you will, these Americans are pretty sharp characters.”
What follows is a humorous piece covering the latest gift to the world from America’s inventive genius: the recording machine of the title. Suffice to say that as the story plays out, it does not exactly confirm the belief that American genius is quite all it has been cracked up to be.
“Connections”
Most of the irony in Zoshchenko’s stories is a very subtle kind that may be pointed, but because it is delivered conversationally and with good humor can often seem blunted. This is really not usually the case as the point the author wishes to make definitely does get made and the point is usually highly critical. This story is an excellent example. It seems harmless enough on the surface, but in reality it is a brutally acidic critique of the systemic corruption throughout the vast Soviet bureaucracy. It begins on what is seemingly a note of genuine surprise:
“Vanyushka Ledentsov’s got a job. Honestly. Now works in a trust.”
From that point on, it details how Ledentsov did indeed apply for a position without having any connections only to eventually get hired because of those people at each level of the bureaucratic hierarchy who came forward to put in a good word for him because, poor kid, he had no connections.
