The Nose

1.  Ivan Yakovlevich is a barber.  He shaves beards and cuts hair for a living.

2.  While he is eating breakfast, Ivan finds a human nose in the middle of his loaf of bread.

3.  Ivan's wife thinks that he pulled the nose off of one of his clients because she has heard them complain about how Ivan pulls at their nose when he shaves their face.  She orders Ivan to get rid of the nose because she doesn't want the police in her house.

4.  Ivan sets out from his home with the nose in a cloth to throw it away or hide it in the street somewhere.  However, he keeps running into people he knows who ask him where he is off to, and when he tosses the nose on the ground, a policeman points out that he's dropped something.  Ivan finally decides to toss the nose over a bridge and into a river, but when he does so, he is questioned by a police officer at the other side of the bridge.

5.  The fact that Ivan's happiness over disposing of the nose in the river illustrates that happiness in Ivan's life and in that society was ephemeral and a rare occurrence.  This theme is further shown when Major Kovalyov gets his nose returned to him.  His happiness and excitement is explained to last only a short two minutes for he realizes that he can't put the nose back on his face.

6.  The nose belongs on the face of Major, or Collegiate Assessor, Kovalyov.  He doesn't know how it left his face; he just woke up one morning and it was gone.  Major Kovalyov finally saw it in town wearing a uniform representing a better respected occupation than Major Kovalyov and praying in a cathedral, but the nose claims to know nothing about being the Major's nose and leaves.  Major Kovalyov tries to put an advertisement in the newspaper with a reward for the person who finds his nose first, but the clerk refuses his request because it could damage the newspaper's reputation.  Major Kovalyov then tries to put the Inspector of Police in the case but he wants to take a nap and refuses.  Major Kovalyov returns home where later that night, the same policeman on the bridge at the beginning of the story calls at his home and returns the nose that he caught Ivan throwing off of the bridge.  Major Kovalyov tries to out the nose back on, but it won't stay so he calls a nearby doctor.  The doctor says that  anything he does will only make it look worse, despite Major Kovalyov's objections, and leaves.  In the end, Major Kovalyov wakes up one morning and his nose is back in its rightful place and no one seems to notice, except for Ivan, that it was gone in the first place.