# The Fat Patzuck — Short Fiction character guide

> The Fat Patzuck in Short Fiction by Nikolai Gogol.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Patzuck, This fat Patzuck

**First appearance:** 0010-the-night-of-christmas-eve

## Snapshot

A Cossack sorcerer of voracious appetite who devours dumplings by magic and offers Vakoola counsel in his errand for the tsaritsa's shoes.

## Who they are

The fat Patzuck is one of Gogol's most grotesque and comic figures, a Cossack who eats dumplings without lifting a finger and whose bulk seems to mock the very idea of magic. He appears as an advisor to Vakoola in his quest, dispensing help from a body that is itself a kind of spectacle. His blend of the supernatural and the gluttonous gives the tale its distinctive flavor — the demonic rendered ridiculous, the helpful rendered hungry.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_40_se/characters/patzuck
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_40_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_40_se/characters