The Author: Nikolai Gogol

“The Overcoat”, published in 1842, is a short story by Nikolai Gogol, a

Ukrainian-born Russian writer of plays, short stories and novels. Though
Gogol is sometimes described as a realist writer, “The Overcoat” contains
surreal, exaggerated and supernatural elements. “The Overcoat” is
perhaps Gogol’s best known work, and is regarded as the most famous
short story in Russian literature. Indeed, a quote that is often misattributed
to Fyodor Dostoevsky (but which Simon Karlinsky notes has been traced to
a French critic named Melchior de Vogüé [135]) states, “We all emerged
from under Gogol’s overcoat.”

The short story: “The Overcoat”

In "The Overcoat," Gogol takes a banal and decidedly pathetic
figure, the titular councillor and copying clerk Akaky Akakievich
Bashmachkin, and presents him in all his absurdity and alienation
as a kind of antihero. The story is notable for its tone, which is
ironic and satiric, taking almost everything as its target: literary
conventions, societal obsessions with rank and status, even
Akaky himself. The story’s satirical notes often converge with its
self-reflexivity—that is to say, its awareness of and drawing
attention to itself as a work of art. The narrator often mentions
writing and the customs of writers, and indeed the ways in which
writers often portray characters such as Akaky.
“The Overcoat” tells the story of the life and death of Akaky
Akakievich Bashmachkin, an unremarkable and indeed pathetic
middle-aged titular councillor and copying clerk serving in an
unnamed department of the Russian civil service. Though Akaky
has very little and is cruelly picked on by his coworkers, Akaky
displays no discontentment with his plight, in fact even openly
relishing his copying work, in which he appears to find some
interesting world of his own. His life is thrown into disarray,
however, when he finds that he must buy a new overcoat, a great
expense for which he is unprepared. Though he is initially upset
by the need for the new overcoat, he soon finds in the quest to
save up for and design the new overcoat a higher purpose. The
thought of the new overcoat becomes a deep comfort to him, like
having a steady companion. The day he receives the coat is the
happiest day of his life. However, a turn of events leads to the
sudden loss of his coat, and shortly thereafter, of his own life.
After his death, Akaky returns as a ghost to haunt St. Petersburg
for a time, stealing coats, and in particular the coat of a general
who had refused to help Akaky.
Akaky Akakievich
Akaky Akakievich is the protagonist and antihero of “The Overcoat.” He is
an unremarkable middle-aged man who serves as a titular councillor and
copying clerk in an unnamed department of the Russian civil service. The
narrator paints him as pathetic in almost every respect, beginning with his
ridiculous name. Even in his physical characteristics Akaky is equivocal: he
possesses no trait definitively but instead is somewhat red-haired,
somewhat balding, and somewhat pockmarked. He is poor, and has a lowly
job title, but not because he has been prevented from advancing in his
career. Rather, Akaky is unambitious and does not wish to be promoted.
The way he speaks is essentially meaningless. He has no clearly defined
family history, though his surname, Bashmachkin, implies some relation to
shoes. He is much abused by those he works with, both superiors and
inferiors, though Akaky betrays no offense or notice until the harassment
begins to interfere with his work. No one can remember who hired Akaky or
when he started working there. Akaky lives entirely in his interior world,
enjoying his copying work above all worldly concerns. However much he is
bullied by his coworkers, Akaky seems to contain a kind of supernatural
power, as is first shown when he unintentionally haunts a young clerk for
the rest of his life, and eventually when he becomes a literal ghost and
steals coats on the streets of St. Petersburg. His life changes, first for the
positive and then for the negative, when he is forced to replace his
extremely worn overcoat. He makes many sacrifices over the course of 6
months to save for a new overcoat, and the day he receives it is the
happiest day of his life. However, an absurd and unfortunate turn of events
leads to the theft of the overcoat and Akaky’s death.

The “important person”

The unnamed “certain important person” is a pivotal figure in Akaky’s story.
The important person has recently been promoted to the rank of general.
Akaky goes to see him after the theft of his overcoat because a
sympathetic colleague counsels him to go entreat the important person for
specific aid in his case. The narrator makes clear that the important person
is someone who has only recently been promoted in importance, and that
he remains unimportant relative to other more important people. Gogol
portrays the important person as an example of the corrupting power of
status and rank. The important person, recently promoted, feels compelled
to cement and augment his status by instituting all sorts of frivolous and
unnecessary practices, such as refusing to have anyone address him
directly, instead going through a long chain of command. In particular, he
can be cruel and purposefully intimidating towards insubordinates. He
treats Akaky this way, in particular to impress a visiting childhood friend
who is present when Akaky comes to visit. Akaky is frightened almost
literally to death by his intimidation: Akaky leaves his office in a daze and,
wandering the streets of St. Petersburg agape, catches a tonsil ailment that
kills him. The important person’s behavior is particularly tragic because the
narrator makes clear that he is actually a good person who has been
confused in his behavior by his recent promotion. He often wishes to act
naturally and in a friendly way towards insubordinates, but does not know
how, because he feels his superior rank cannot permit it. At the end of the
story, the ghost of Akaky returns and steals his overcoat.

Petrovich
Petrovich is Akaky’s tailor. He is half-blind and often drunk. He was once a
squire’s serf, and at that time went by the name of Grigory. He has a wife
who the narrator suggests is not very beautiful. Akaky turns to him often for
repairs on his endlessly mended, flimsy housecoat. Usually Akaky is able
to negotiate with Petrovich to pay a small sum for the repairs, because
when Petrovich is drunk he is very suggestible. However, when Akaky goes
to Petrovich at the time the story takes place, Petrovich is sober, and this
time he tells Akaky that it will be impossible to mend the coat. He says that
it is too worn, and that Akaky will have to have a new overcoat made. Not
having very much money, Akaky panics. However, eventually Akaky
becomes obsessed by the quest to save for a new overcoat. Petrovich
helps Akaky shop for the materials after 6 months of rigorous saving, and
he spends 2 weeks making Akaky’s new overcoat. Petrovich is very proud
of the end result, feeling that he has distinguished himself from those tailors
who simply mend things by becoming a tailor who makes new clothes.

Themes
Rank and status
One of the most prominent themes of “The Overcoat” is the preoccupation
with status and rank. Akaky’s status is one of the first things that the story
mentions, “for with us rank must be announced first of all,” though the ironic
tone of the narrator suggests that he does not endorse this obsession
(394). People are constantly attentive to rank and status in a way that can
corrupt their ability to act humanely towards one another and even lead to
corruption. Akaky, notably, is not concerned at all with rank or status,
making him very different from everyone around him. He has no interest in
being promoted, tolerates mistreatment from everyone, and copies things
for others at work regardless of whether they have the right to order him
around. He pays no attention to what is happening around him, to the
extent of bumping into people and horses in the street, whereas, the
narrator says, “his young fellow clerk” is always looking around, “his pert
gaze so keen that he even notices when someone on the other side of the
street has the footstrap of his trousers come undone” (398). The “important
person,” by contrast, is an example of someone corrupted by the obsession
with rank and status, finding himself unable to act normally and humanely
towards subordinates even though he is a kind person at heart.

Work as the world and the world of work

One theme of “The Overcoat” is the way in which, for its characters, work
constitutes their world. This is seen metaphorically in the instance of the
clerks, who are much concerned with their own advancement and spend
their hours away from work socializing with each other, repeating high
society gossip. Things that occur in the office can also function as
metaphors for the world at large; the young clerk haunted by Akaky’s
mistreatment by his coworkers is haunted by it for the rest of his life, taking
it as symbolic of humanity’s capacity for cruelty in general despite
superficial refinement and elegance. However, the idea of work as one’s
entire world is literalized by Akaky, who literally works all day, including for
his own pleasure at home, seeing nothing around him except neat lines of
his own handwriting. Notably absent from “The Overcoat” are common
themes like love, marriage, family or religion: this is a world entirely
concerned by work, socializing with one’s colleagues, and determining how
one may cement one’s social status.

Self-reflexivity as a work of art

One of the important themes of “The Overcoat” is its self-reflexivity and
constant reference to itself as a work of art. The narrator continually refers
to writing and the customs of writers, indeed often to make fun of them. He
says, for example, that he should not have to describe Petrovich, but that
since the literary fashion mandates the inclusion of all sorts of unnecessary
information, he will have to give some biographical details. The narrator
also mentions the fallibility of his own memory and the limits of his own
interest. With regards to where the young clerk who hosts the party lived,
the narrator says: “We unfortunately cannot say: our memory is beginning
to fail us badly” (410). With regards to what happened to Akaky’s
possessions after his death, the narrator comically admits: “God knows;
that, I confess, did not even interest the narrator of this story” (419). This is
distinct from a more traditional variety of omniscient third-person narrating
that seeks to convey total realism. Self-reflexivity in the story often has a
comic or clever effect, but this is not the sole reason Gogol employs it: in
fact, it often facilitates his play with literary conventions and genres.

Destiny and fate

On a number of occasions the narrator references destiny and fate, often
with a satirical tone. The narrator claims that it was inevitable that Akaky
Akakievich be named Akaky Akakievich and that no other series of events
was possible. Akaky makes an ugly face at his baptism, as if, the narrator
jokes, he knows he is to become a titular councillor. In adult life, because
no one can remember when Akaky was hired or who hired him, people
become “convinced that he must simply have been born into the world
ready-made, in a uniform, and with a balding head” (396)—that is, that not
only was it is his destiny to become as he is, but that he has never been
anything other than he is. Akaky, for his own part, is resigned to his fate,
expressing contentment with his modest lot until life throws a complication
in his path. Even in death, the narrator states that Akaky was “fated to live
noisily for a few days after his death, as if in reward for his entirely
unnoticed life” (420). Whether this fatalistic worldview is the only one
possible is a question for each reader to decide.

Sympathy and fellowship

Gogol’s project of cultivating sympathy for his characters begins with the
fact that he constructs as his subject the completely ridiculous Akaky, a
figure who the narrator repeatedly emphasizes is interesting to no one and
cared for by nobody. By emphasizing Akaky's extreme isolation and
loneliness, Gogol paradoxically elicits sympathy and even interest for him
from the reader. The young clerk who is haunted by Akaky’s remark is
emblematic of this project. In the same way that Gogol makes us
sympathetic towards the sad, ridiculous character of Akaky, a young clerk
in Akaky’s workplace is suddenly struck by Akaky’s response to being
harassed, hearing in it: “I am your brother” (397). “The Overcoat” arguably
concerns itself with sympathy rather than empathy, because on numerous
occasions in the story Gogol states that it is impossible to fully understand
what another person thinks. But he nonetheless reinforces the importance
being “capable of entering at least somewhat into another man’s
predicament”

Ghosts and the supernatural

Towards the end of the story, “The Overcoat” takes a fantastical turn.
Akaky dies suddenly of quinsy and, as if to compensate for the way in
which he was ignored in life, he looms terrifyingly over St. Petersburg in the
days after his death. He becomes a ghost who haunts the streets, stealing
coats from people regardless of their rank. Though this turn seems
unexpected, Akaky’s supernatural power is in a way foreshadowed by the
episode with the young clerk. Akaky haunts this young man too, in a
psychological way, and he is also described there as exerting an “unnatural
power” (396). The unexpected turn to the supernatural is facilitated by
Gogol’s use, discussed above, of self-reflexivity—though it is a sudden
turn, Gogol makes it work by acknowledging that it is a sudden turn. The
ghost plot within “The Overcoat” also functions to produce a certain sense
of justice within the story. Akaky is able to gain in death the kind of revenge
he was unable to achieve in life, balancing the story to a degree and saving
it from unredeemed tragedy. However, as the critic Simon Karlinsky notes,
Gogol also seems to suggest that the ghost might simply be one of the
same thieves who stole Akaky’s coat earlier: the thieves are described as
being mustached, and the phantom is described at the end of the story as
being “taller now,” with an “enormous mustache” (424). The question of
whether Akaky truly receives justice, or whether the supernatural turn in the
story is truly a supernatural one, remains open.

Sublimated sexuality
Though subtle, “The Overcoat” hints at a sublimated sexuality at certain
key points in the story, an theme to which critic Simon Karlinsky draws
attention (142). This sexuality is one which emerges with the advent of
Akaky’s new coat, suggesting the ways in which the overcoat has the
potential to change Akaky. First, when Akaky is saving for the overcoat, the
idea of it is so substantial and such a comfort to him that it seems to him
like being married and having a wife. This potential is brought out by
Petrovich’s delivery of the coat, but prematurely extinguished by the theft of
the coat. The first instance referencing this sublimated sexuality is when
Akaky notices, for the first time, an advertisement featuring a woman’s
bared leg, at which he chuckles for no particular reason. The second
instance is when Akaky, leaving the party, is mysteriously possessed with
the urge for the first time to follow an intriguing woman down the street.
However, the story also seems to suggest that sexuality is dangerous, in a
way that leads Akaky to disaster. When Akaky’s coat is stolen, the
superintendent intimidates Akaky by asking him if he had been out late at
night visiting a brothel, embarrassing him. It is almost as if Akaky is being
punished—perhaps even with death—for his newfound awareness.