As much as much of its text may be centered on "realist" imagery, Nikolai Gogol's "poem of Russia", Dead Souls is still full of commentary and extra-narrative digressions, in keeping with Gogol's established style and his stated intentions for the novel as a morally edifying work. Within the main plot, this manifests itself mainly in short satirical digressions and fleeting similes (up to a few paragraphs long) conveyed by the author/narrator of Chichikov's journey. In later sections of the novel, however, the nondiegetic language expands to include entire passages in alternating voices or stylistic registers. As rhapsodic as they may appear, these non-plot points share a series of narrative strategies that build up to the author's direct addresses in the final chapters. When Gogol shifts from speaking for Chichikov to letting the characters speak for themselves, or to letting themselves speak for the reader, he prepares his audience for his final conclusions about the relationships between each speaker. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The turning point for extra-narrative concerns that supplant plot issues is the shift in narrative focus from Chichikov's schemes to the townspeople and their gossip. The first such scene is “a certain conversation which took place between some two women” in Chapter Nine (174). As in Chichikov's introduction in the first chapter, the characters' names are not revealed until they come into diegetic focus. They are "heard" for the first time in the dialogue, while Chichikov's name and rank are not known to the reader until they can be "seen" in writing (178, 4). More pronounced in this last section, however, is the narrator's motivation to distance himself from his subjects. He introduces this section by acknowledging that "the author is very difficult in naming both women in such a way as not to make them angry at him, as they were angry in the old days" (175). Here, the skaz-style faux verisimilitude that has occasionally influenced the narrative of the plot is taken to a higher level to suggest that elements of this anecdote could be interpreted as non-fictional. Echoing the opening of "The Overcoat," the authorial narrator hyperbolically explains that he wishes to avoid inadvertently vilifying anyone with the same names as his fictional characters (175-6). Paradoxically, the author's wishes are not honored by his own pen: the characters do not remain nameless. But it is not the narrator's voice that names them, it is theirs. Gogol thus creates a crucial distinction between the concerns of his narrator and those of his characters. Before this chapter, with Chichikov chosen as both the subject and object of the narrative, these were one and the same. The distinction may therefore seem somewhat arbitrary, but its importance becomes apparent as the thematic scope of the novel expands beyond its linear plot. Having control over their fictional identity gives these characters the sort of "ludicrous agency" that becomes a hallmark of extra-narrative speakers in Dead Souls. The qualities of self-determination, expressed in relative freedom from narrative control, diminish rather than elevate the moral standing of these characters. In this first example, the narrow focus of the plot-driven narrative gives way to a deeper insight into very superficial people. . The women's elaborate dialogue begins with a long disagreement over clothes, continues through gossip about Chichikov's intrigues, and includes a particularlycontroversial on the face of a third woman (177-8, 180-4, 182). Throughout the film, the wickedness of the women is shown in their own voices. What begins as a simple disagreement about one's complexion ends with exaggerated venom like "I am ready, right here and now, to lose my children, my husband, our entire fortune, if he has even one little drop, even a small particle." , even a shade of red on his cheeks! (182). An earlier discussion ends with one of the women reasoning, with the false courtesy of high society, “it seems like you really want to insult me. . . Evidently you are already tired of me, evidently you want to break off your entire friendship with me” (178). It is important to note that this patently ridiculous form of speech is quoted directly, without paraphrase or commentary from the narrator, to remove any doubt that the insane jealousy and quarrelsomeness on display is a personal failing of these two souls. The verbal depth with which Gogol imbues them only makes them closer to type. The third-person narrator's contributions to this character judgment are limited to his claims that the scene is not too grotesque or banal to realistically reflect Russian society. To deny the improbability of such brutally petty disagreements, he writes “let it not seem strange to the reader. . . there are indeed many things in this world that have precisely this particularity” (183). Of their incredible gullibility towards the rumours, he says: “there is nothing unusual in the fact that the two women finally became completely convinced of what they had hitherto merely assumed and knew to be a mere supposition. Our brotherhood – we intelligent people, as we call ourselves – acts in much the same way” (185). This last statement fits a novel-level rhetorical strategy of taking on the reader's disbelief and countering it with an example from a scene seemingly drawn from the reader's experience, or at least from some form of common knowledge. The same tactic is used in chapter ten to explain how the population could believe that Chichikov could be Napoleon Bonaparte: “Perhaps there are some readers who will call this unlikely. . . However, it must be remembered that all this happened only shortly after the glorious expulsion of the French. At that time all our landowners, officials. . . all our literate people, as well as the illiterate, had become – at least for the whole eight years – hardened politicians” (205). Once again, the narrator includes himself and the reader (with “we” and “our”) as members of a huge third who can judge the citizens' foibles as absurd but believable. There are two other notable examples of characters whose agency increases with a change in narrative voice, only to reveal their bizarre flaws. These are the gossips, Nozdrev and the postmaster, who have the ability to tell their own stories within the narrator's text. Nozdrev turns the novel's threads repeatedly, culminating in his own version of Chichikov's supposed backstory. In this section the narrative voice is not entrusted entirely to Nozdrev, but it conforms to his verbal style. It is said that "Nozdrev was definitely a man for whom absolutely no doubts existed", and what follows is a list of direct answers, given completely without equivocation or authorial comment. Each answer corresponds to the textual formula “To the question: [citizens' voices about Chichikov]. Nozdrev's response: [Yes or no, a great story ensues]” (207). As in the case of women, the author gives Nozdrev more freedom of action by putting his words before his. Nozdrev's independence from the narrator is perhaps not so complete because hisdialogue is paraphrased rather than quoted and adapts to a repetitive, and therefore more artificial, style. However, this change in textual form stands out enough to identify Nozdrev as an alternative voice to the narrator. As highlighted in chapters four and eight, one of Nozdrev's key character traits is his ability to construct alternative narratives to those presented by his peers (66, 168). This gives him greater depth than the landowner archetypes, whose quirks are revealed by the unverbalized observations of Chichikov and the narrator. Yet for all his mastery of story-telling, Nozdrev fails to utter a word of substance or honesty: "Nozbrev, with a moment's hesitation, went off with a streak of nonsense so blue that it bore no resemblance to either the truth nor with anything else on earth" (208). Because his gift of wit is always used to lie, Nozdrev remains a tragicomic example of Russian vice, albeit a more fleshed-out one than the other caricatures. Nozdrev's action is real enough to prevent the narrator from including his voice in his own, but his abuse of that freedom makes him an easier target for ridicule in extra-narrative commentary. The Postmaster General represents the most completely independent extra-narrative voice, because his anecdote includes an entirely separate narrative voice, not just a change in third-person narrative style. His hypothesis about Chichikov's backstory takes the form of the long interpolation in chapter ten, "The Story of Captain Kopeikin" (197-204). This segment is a complete skaz story of a vengeful veteran, proposed to the assembled citizens as a solution to Chichikov's mysterious identity. The plot is less indicative of the postmaster's agency than the language in which it is conveyed. The postmaster is presented in chapter ten as one who peppers his speech with "a multiplicity of miscellaneous terms and fragments of phrases, such as 'my dear sir', 'some sort of boy', 'you know', 'you understand'" , “you can only imagine,” “relatively speaking, so to speak,” “in a sort of way,” and other small verbal changes” (153). In the narration of Kopeikin's story, in fact, these exact verbal tics appear in almost every sentence, and the extradiegetic narrator comments on this practice: “After the campaign of 1812, my dear sir – (so the postmaster began, despite the fact that the room contained not one gentleman but all six gentlemen)” (197). This comic assumption of a plural audience and a profusion of addresses to that audience is shared with the style of the authorial narrator, thus positioning the two voices as equally authoritative in this chapter. Furthermore, the protagonist often refers to his protagonist as “my Kopeikin,” echoing the author's use of “our hero” and “our friend Chichikov” (199, 222). Even more so than Nozdrev, the director of the post office shows his action by taking ownership of the narrative. Of course, the incredibly short-sighted conclusions that the postmaster comes to in his digression make his agency most ridiculous. When it is pointed out that Kopeikin cannot be the same man as Chichikov because he missing an arm, the postmaster initially admits his mistake, but then attempts to fantastically rationalize his most fully realized diegetic entry in the novel This suggests that even the most seemingly self-possessed people in Dead Souls' Russia fail at the crucial task of self-reflection. For Gogol, this task is an entirely moral undertaking. This opinion is revealed in his second letter to the readers of Dead Souls, in which.