Discuss how ‘The Overcoat’s’ narrator affects your interpretation of the story?

The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed first person narrator who is not directly involved in the events of the story but is aware of (and, to varying degrees, sympathetic with) the characters' thoughts and emotions. For many present-day readers accustomed to short stories beginning in medias res (i.e., as the action has already begun), "The Overcoat" seems to adopt a leisurely pace initially as the character of Akaky Akakievich, his family background, and the St. Petersburg setting in which he lives and works are all introduced. Gogol uses the opening section of the story not only to set the scene, but to establish a particular narrative voice as well. By turns sarcastic, humorous, poignant, and disturbing, Gogol's narrator tells the story in a way that both entertains and instructs— with enough distance to provide critical commentary and yet enough dramatic intensity to draw readers in and not seem preachy.