The Overcoat

“The Overcoat” is a satirical, supernatural short story told by an unnamed third-person narrator. Following a linear timeline over the last few months of its protagonist’s life, the story pokes fun at Materialism and bureaucracy, while at the same time making a plea for compassion. The main character Akaky Akakievich is the consummate underdog. No one notices him except to make fun of him or bark orders at him. Even Gogol’s narrator mocks the main character by describing his halting way of speech, his unassuming appearance, and his passion for his mundane job as a copyist. The story’s setting highlights Akaky Akakievich’s insignificance. He works as a low-ranking functionary in a bland, unnamed government bureaucracy, which allows Gogol to emphasize the repetitiveness and apparent futility of his life, and perhaps helps explain why he becomes so consumed with his new overcoat.

Akaky Akakievich is an everyman figure and, in some ways, quite a miserable one. At the same time, there is an element of grace about how fulfilled he is by his limited existence. He does not crave promotion or praise, instead choosing to return to copying when he is recognized for his skill at work. He is not resentful of his low salary or difficult circumstances. Instead, when he begins to save for the coat, he is fulfilled by having a sense of purpose and feels he belongs to something greater than himself (almost a “marriage”) now that he can focus on a goal. Gogol’s story offers an unusual treatment of the theme of Materialism. Akaky Akakievich’s obsession with this material object, the overcoat, is apparently not a matter of vanity. He loves it not because it is rare, expensive, or superior to the possessions of others. He loves it, apparently, because it keeps him warm and is one of the few high-quality items in his daily life.

This subservience, as rendered by Gogol, is in turn both pathetic and noble. The theme of Futility and Fate appears early in the story. Akaky Akakievich appears satisfied in his job of filling out forms; his life and his work are an endless and apparently futile cycle of drudgery, yet he enjoys it. When he attempts to introduce something new into his life in the form of the overcoat, his satisfaction quickly turns to obsession with this new object and before long to the occasion of his death. His attempt to break his futile daily routine leads to even greater futility: the loss of his coat and his death.

The tone of “The Overcoat,” while lightly comic for the most part, veers into tragedy when Akaky Akakievich sticks up for himself against his coworkers’ bullying. His plight so moves one of his newer coworkers that the narrator says of him:

Long afterward, during moments of piety, the image of the humble little clerk with the bald patch on his head appeared before him with his heart-rending words: ‘Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?’ and within those moving words he heard others: ‘I am your brother.’ And the poor young man hid his face in his hands, and many times afterwards he shuddered, seeing how much inhumanity there is in man (307).

The narrator both participates in mocking the story’s protagonists and regrets that human beings treat each other so cruelly. The ambiguity in tone reflects the ambiguity of the story’s conclusion. The story can be read both as a moral cautionary tale and as a commentary on the fragility (perhaps futility) of morality amid human vice.

“The Overcoat” is a deeply ironic tale, as the best day of Akaky Akakievich’s life turns into the worst when his new overcoat is stolen. What makes the day so fulfilling for Akaky Akakievich is not the attentions of his coworkers, which are for once positive, but instead the opportunity to enjoy his new coat. Akaky Akakievich is self-contained without being self-satisfied. Unlike the Person of Consequence, he does not feel the need to impress those around him, nor does he feel the need to bully those below him like his coworkers do. He expresses mild fear at the idea of haggling over a price with his tailor Petrovich, even though as a clerk speaking to a former serf in 1840s Russia, he could have been brusque and demanding. Gogol’s story inverts the usual Criticism of Bureaucracy. Rather than showing mediocrities rise and excellence quashed, Gogol describes Akaky Akakievich being recognized for his good work. He is offered a promotion. What keeps him on the lower rungs of the bureaucracy is not office politics or corruption but rather his unwillingness to rise.

If “The Overcoat” has a moral, it is the Need for Compassion. The suffering of the protagonist and other characters is rooted in how people treat others. The tragic outcome of the story is due not to luck or the gods but rather to how people choose to behave. The coworkers’ cruelty and the Person of Consequence’s arrogant indifference generate misery that they have the privilege to ignore—at least until they are haunted by Akaky Akakievich’s corpse. All that is needed to produce a completely different outcome is for people to be kinder. However, the story also illustrates that acting with compassion does not mean everything will turn out well. The coworker who expresses sympathy toward Akaky Akakievich can do nothing to prevent the coat from being stolen or to help him recover it. The remedy to cruelty in Gogol’s story is not kindness but rather revenge. When Akaky Akakievich gets his revenge on the Person of Consequence by taking his overcoat, it is a small act of retribution. The Person of Consequence loses his coat and is shaken by the experience, but no greater societal shift takes place as a result. Likewise, the story ends with an abrupt change of focus onto another ghost who wanders the streets of St. Petersburg, suggesting that Akaky Akakievich’s afterlife is as easily forgotten as his time on Earth.