The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich Literary Elements

The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich Literary Elements

Genre

The narrative

Setting and Context

The story happens in Mirgorod in the mid-19th century

Narrator and Point of View

First-person limited

Tone and Mood

The tone of the story is mostly ludicrous and expressive, most of all when two quarrels between the protagonists take place.

Protagonist and Antagonist

These roles are hard to allocate, ‘cause we don’t know who is “good” for the narrator and who is “bad”, but we see two main enemies in the story: Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Nikiforovitch.

Major Conflict

The major conflict of the story – the quarrel, develops because of one word, which was carelessly thrown by one man concerning another.

Climax

The culmination of the story is when I. Nikiforovitch calls I. Ivanovitch in a bad way. After this moment, being the best friends, they become the worst enemies.

Foreshadowing

N/A

Understatement

Gogol uses this method when he describes the protagonists. He intentionally gives them just one bright characteristics: they are fine. But through the plot of the story we open for ourselves a huge number of other their traits: good and bad ones.

Allusions

N/A

Imagery

The author uses imagery when describing nature. Also common day situations are very vividly and expressively described.

Paradox

The main paradox of the story is that two best friends because of a ridiculous quarrel become the worst enemies. These people are not able to appreciate friendship

Parallelism

N/A

Metonymy and Synecdoche

The author uses sometimes a whole as a part of something, or vise verse to make the expressions more saturated: “Ivan Ivanovitch reflected; and meantime his eyes, in their search after fresh objects”, “Then came a blue Cossack jacket”, “If two one-horse carts chanced to meet they could not get out”.

Personification

The author often uses this method to make the image more vivid, such as here: “A willow, an oak, and two apple-trees lean their spreading branches against it. Through the trees peep little windows with carved and white-washed shutters.

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