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The Government Inspector
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Themes
The Impact of Corruption
The Government Inspector is a satire of the rampant corruption in Russian society in the 19th century (See: Background). The play is set in a small, unnamed town which functions as a stand-in for every town in every province in the Russian Empire—this vagueness allows the satire to target all parts of society.
In this small town, everyone is engaged in corrupt practices. The civic leaders know that their behavior is illegal, yet they all justify their actions to one another by insisting that any other person in their situation would do exactly the same thing. They explain away raising geese in the courthouse or skimping on medical care with their utter conviction that everyone is just as corrupt as they are. To an extent, they are right: Every single character in the play, from the Mayor to Khlestakov to the shopkeepers, is willing to give and receive bribes.
The Mayor is the main embodiment of corruption. He is so corrupt that, when the government sends an inspector to investigate any potential misdeeds, his only solution is to charm, bribe, and corrupt this government inspector instead of reforming his practices. An important element of the Mayor’s corruption is how decidedly narrow-minded and petty it is. He has very few ambitions beyond his own minor enrichment. As corrupt as he may be, he cannot abandon his provincial mindset and—as the shopkeepers complain to Khlestakov—his corruption occurs mostly in the form of petty and vindictive self-indulgence, to the point where he seems almost more like a bully than a corrupt public official.
As a native of St. Petersburg, Khlestakov’s presence illustrates that corruption is not limited to the provincial areas. When Khlestakov realizes that he is being bribed by the Mayor and his cohorts, Khlestakov immediately takes advantage of this, showing that a low-level clerk from the city is more than happy to pose as an important government inspector if he is able to enrich himself. Khlestakov brags about his importance in his hometown, weaving together lies so that the townspeople believe him to be a key member of the St. Petersburg elite. When he proposes to Maria, the Mayor’s first thought is of himself: He imagines how his new son-in-law will help him gain an important position in the city, setting aside any accusations of corruption through his familial connections. When everything falls apart, however, the play suggests that corruption is not a viable and sustainable way to run a society.
The Dangers of Delusion
Every character in The Government Inspector operates under some degree of delusion. They delude themselves willingly, as a way to protect their egos from being undermined. However, the play exposes the dangers of delusions through exploring how some of the characters get caught up in their own lies.
Khlestakov’s story is a key example of the way in which this delusion operates. When he arrives in town, he is a broke and irrelevant clerk from St. Petersburg who has lost all his money at the card table and who now risks jail because he cannot pay his hotel bill. When he begins speaking to the Mayor, however, he is given a whole new opportunity to delude himself. He buys into the Mayor’s mistake and begins posing as the government inspector from St. Petersburg. The delusion grows within Khlestakov so quickly that he goes from fearing jail to bragging about his own importance to a crowd of rapt civic leaders. His lies become increasingly outlandish: He solicits money from the civic leaders and even proposes marriage to the Mayor’s daughter. Now that Khlestakov’s ego has been swollen by the praise of the townspeople, he has bought into his own delusion.
Few characters in the play are more deluded than Anna. While she might not actively engage in the corruption of the town, she is remarkable in her egotistical sense of entitlement. Her combative relationship with her daughter is based on delusion, in which she cannot imagine how anyone might favor the much-younger Maria instead of herself. She lives vicariously through the male attention directed at Maria, choosing to believe that it is directed at her instead. She welcomes Khlestakov’s romantic advances, both toward herself and toward Maria, as she sees these as one and the same. After his proposal, Anna quickly accepts on her daughter’s behalf. When she tells people about the proposal, she continually inserts herself into Maria’s role, to the point that Maria must try to stop her own mother. When Khlestakov’s true identity is revealed, Anna is stuck operating under her delusion to the extent that she cannot grasp what has happened.
By the play’s end, both Khlestakov and Anna’s delusions are exposed, but neither character has learned any lessons from these experiences. Khlestakov is still determined to go back to gambling with his ill-gotten gains, and Anna cannot believe that the marriage will not take place. The Government Inspector thus suggests that, when the lines between reality and delusion become blurred, it can become impossible for characters to break their own self-destructive patterns.
The Contrasts Between Town and Country
Throughout The Government Inspector, a line is drawn between urban and rural spaces. The play is set in a small provincial town, which represents rural Russian life, while Khlestakov’s origins in St. Petersburg provide a way of contrasting the provincial nature of rural existence with the urban splendor of the Russian capital.
That the small town is not named is important, as it allows the town to function as a broad allegory for all similar rural communities. The play takes a satirical view of these country people and their practices, particularly as their corruption takes absurd forms, such as turning the government courthouse into a place to raise farm animals. The behavior of the Mayor and the other civic leaders is often petty, and there is little sense of propriety or order, as witnessed in the medical authorities’ lack of care for their patients and the Postmaster’s eagerness to snoop through mail for gossip. The portrayal of rural life parodies the country folk, suggesting that they lack the ambition or vision to be worldly or refined.
Khlestakov is the representative of the urban world, as he hails from St. Petersburg. Although he lies about being an important person, tellingly, however, he does not need any form of proof to convince the rural townspeople of his importance. The townspeople are too ignorant of Petersburg society to recognize that Khlestakov lacks the refinement that a nobleman or high official would usually have. Khlestakov plays into this, concocting a series of increasingly elaborate lies. By the end of his lying, he is telling people that he is on friendly terms with Russian royalty and is a frequent presence at court. This juxtaposes with the initial image of Khlestakov, who was panicking at not being able to pay his hotel bill. The contrast between urban and rural is not particularly flattering to either party, suggesting that neither urban nor rural areas have the moral high ground in the play.
As well as the rural and the urban, there is a third geographical location in the Russian psyche of the era. The play makes occasional allusions to Siberia, a far- flung part of the Russian Empire which was a common destination for sending criminals into prison or exile. The cold, desolate Siberia occupies the thoughts of many characters: They fear that they may be caught for their corruption and sent there. Siberia transcends the boundaries between rural and urban, uniting the characters in a common fear of the autocracy’s reach.
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By Nikolai Gogol
