aweonao
!bookworms to discuss the 4th chapter of our book club choice Petersburg. I'm delayed and still in the middle of chapter 4 so I'll post on the following days or catch up by the next thread like I did last week.
Do you guys think Nikolai Apollonovich is like that because of inceldom?
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Maybe I'm too Biden pilled but I don't see why you can't be a minister just because your r-slurred son dresses up like a strag and dances around in the street. I blame the corrupt
newspapers!
My one genuine question from this chapter though is why they're so obsessed with describing Apollon's hideous appearance. Is there any allusion I'm missing to a father looking like a chicken and the son looking like a frog? Or is it just funny?
Oh also I guess Jesus or god or something showed up? Idk what that's all about. The footnote also seemed to think that and more.
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the chicken thing is an allegory for his father's inability to keep Nikolai supplied with a constant stream of chicken tendies
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The author was a leftist (albeit one who was able to take a joke and make fun of the movement he supported), and much like modern rightoids mocked Biden for his age Apollon is a satire of the Tsarist regime, so he's portrayed as old, out of touch, stunchly conservative, repulsive, and paranoid.
Back in the day family reputation mattered, especially for the aristocracy, so if your children were engaging in "shameful" acts that affected the entire family reputation. It's a "your momma is a whore" type of stuff but which was quite important politically.
Again, the definition of "shameful" varied, if the gossip was about Apollon son banging Angel Peri or going to a whorehouse that was sort of "expected" so to speak. Technically shameful but nothing out of the ordinary for the aristocracy. Having his son ousted as a member of a left-wing terrorist organization on the other hand is the type of scandal which would completely destroy Apollon's career and social life.
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I guess the whole looking like a plucked chicken thing might be a joke about how people wanna butcher him though. Don't know about the frog though.
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