The Diary of a Madman Analysis

Poprishchin wastes no time at the beginning of the story to start complaining about all those corrupt provincials with their fancy houses. So we know right away that he's in some big city. But when...

Poprishchin is not just at the steering wheel of this wild bus ride through insanity, he's also the one holding the mic and telling us all about what's going on out there. Of course, when you see a...

From start to finish, there's no escaping the snark in this story. To begin with, there's Poprishchin scorning everyone and everything with his ridiculous exaggerations. Remember what he has to say...

To make the whole "this is the diary of a madman" idea believable, Gogol really had to nail this one, and we think he did. The way Poprishchin describes everything is so casual and matter-of-fact t...

Let's take our cue from our friend Poprishchin on this one. When he's reading Medji's first letter, he says its style is "doggy" (8.1). He later explains this means "extremely uneven," as it "begin...

The title of this story seems pretty straightforward, right? It is a diary, and it is written by a madman. What more could there be to that? Well, hold on a second, though. Let's think about what w...

Let's start with that date, "The 34 February (written upside down) th, yrae (that's right, not year but yrae) 349." That date is written in a way that doesn't leave much doubt about Poprishchin's s...

While Gogol deliberately writes in very simple language that translates clearly into English, life in 19th-century Russia can still seem alien to us. But rest assured, we explain a lot of the alien...

Something Crazy Happened on the Way to WorkPoprishchin runs into Sophie, the boss' daughter, on the way to work. He thinks he hears her dog talking to another dog about writing letters. At this s...

What is one of the best literary descriptions of schizophrenia? You guessed it, the award goes to "The Diary of a Madman"! (Source)When Gogol's first self-published poem got bad reviews, he burned...

Sure, Poprishchin is obsessed with Sophie and stalks her. But his fantasies about what her foot might look like when she places it on a stool and puts a snow-white stocking on it is about as steamy...

Alexander Pushkin (2.1) is considered to be one of the greatest Russian literary figures of all time, but watch out—those lines Poprishchin quotes are actually not from Pushkin. They're from a no...