NON-AFRICAN DRAMA NIKOLAI GOGOL: The Government Inspector Examine the character of the Postmaster and his contribution to the play.

Answer Details

The Postmaster, Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin, is one of the corrupt officials of the town in Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector, and although he holds a minor office, he plays a decisive part in both the comedy and the shattering climax of the play.

Character. Shpekin is a simple-minded, incurably curious man whose besetting habit is opening and reading other people's letters. He does this not chiefly out of malice but out of nosiness and a naive delight in the news; he cannot resist the temptation to unseal the mail, and he even keeps letters he finds especially entertaining. This blend of pettiness, dishonesty and childlike innocence makes him a memorably comic figure and a fair representative of the small-town official who abuses his post as a matter of course.

Contribution to the plot. When the Mayor and the other officials, alarmed by the rumour of an inspector, cast about for information, they naturally think of the Postmaster, hoping he can intercept any incriminating correspondence. His habit of prying, at first merely a comic trait, becomes the very mechanism that unmasks the truth.

The decisive letter. In the final act it is Shpekin who bursts in with the letter Hlestakov has written to his friend Tryapichkin. In it Hlestakov mocks the officials, describes how easily he has deceived them, and reveals that he is no inspector at all. By opening and reading this letter, as is his custom, the Postmaster exposes the whole fraud. His curiosity, the very vice that defines him, delivers the play's great reversal and brings the officials' complacency crashing down just before the announcement of the real inspector's arrival.

Significance. Shpekin thus embodies Gogol's satire on petty officialdom, the man who casually violates his duty, while also serving as the ironic agent of exposure. It is fitting that a society built on deceit and prying should be undone by its own most inquisitive rogue. His contribution is therefore both thematic, reinforcing the picture of universal corruption, and structural, providing the catalyst for the denouement.