Summary
When he returns home from work, Akaky compares his old coat to his new one and laughs at the difference. He eats dinner and does no copying work at all afterwards, instead lying in bed until it turns dark and becomes time to go to the party. Though the narrator admits that he does not remember where the other clerk lived, he is sure that the clerk lived in a much better part of town, and therefore far enough away from Akaky to necessitate a long walk. As Akaky walks to the clerk’s house, the sparsely populated and poorly lit streets of his neighborhood slowly give way to a much wealthier, more fashionable part of town, with people out on the streets and flashy carriages. He regards this all as though it is new: “It was several years since he had gone out in the evening” (410). Reaching the clerk’s house, he encounters rows of galoshes and overcoats in a grandly decorated front hall. When the clerks see him, they greet him loudly, and rush to the front hall to examine his new coat again. Akaky is embarrassed by the attention, though “being a pure-hearted man, he could not help rejoicing to see how everyone praised his overcoat” (411). Soon everyone returns to their conversations and card games, and Akaky is left to himself, completely unsure of what to do in this social situation. He leaves as soon as he can, which is still past midnight and Akaky’s ordinary bedtime.
As Akaky completes his initial walk in reverse, the streets—“none too cheerful” even during the day—become darker (412). As he enters an “endless square,” he sees a light flash in a sentry box far away. He is suddenly afraid, and decides that it will be best for him to walk with his eyes closed (412). However, when he opens his eyes to see how far he has walked, he sees some mustached figures right before his face. They mug him, stealing his overcoat and leaving Akaky face down in the snow. Akaky, panicked, shouts, “but his voice never seem[s] to reach the ends of the square” (413). He runs to the sentry box, where he encounters an on-duty policeman. The policeman, however, claims not to have seen anything—he thought that the two men were friends greeting Akaky, and tells Akaky that he should simply go to the inspector the following morning to report the theft. Running home, he meets his landlady, who tells him that he should go not to the inspector but directly to the superintendent, because the inspector will cheat him. Akaky goes in resignation to his room, and “how he spent the night,” the narrator says, “we will leave to the judgment of those capable of entering at least somewhat into another man’s predicament” (414).
When Akaky goes to the superintendent the next day, it is the beginning of his great difficulty in getting authorities to help him with the theft of his overcoat. He is mysteriously denied access to the superintendent multiple times for different reasons, until Akaky finally acts assertively and tells the scriveners in the front room that he must see the superintendent immediately on important business, threatening a complaint if he is denied. Akaky gains access to the superintendent, but instead of listening to Akaky’s story, the superintendent instead begins questioning him, asking Akaky why he was out in the streets so late, and whether he had perhaps visited a brothel. Akaky is so embarrassed that he leaves unsure if anything will be done about his overcoat. Returning to work the next day, he wears his old housecoat, inciting derision from some but pity from others. One sympathetic clerk counsels Akaky not to operate through the police, telling him that the best thing to do will be to write to a “certain important person,” who will refer things to “the proper quarters,” thereby speeding up proceedings (415).
The narrator states that the precise post of this “important person” remains unknown, but that the important person had only become important recently in time, having previously been unimportant (415). The narrator also clarifies that this important person remains unimportant relative to other more important people. However, the important person has taken pleasure in trying to increase his importance by instituting different kinds of bureaucracy attesting to his status, like making a clerk greet him on the stairs when he arrives at the office, and forbidding anyone to address him directly, instead going through a chain of clerks in order of hierarchy. “Thus everything in Holy Russia,” the narrator says, “is infected with imitation, and each one mimics and apes his superior…The ways and habits of the important person were imposing and majestic, but of no great complexity” (415). The important person insists strongly on a principle of strictness and treats his inferiors with unexplained and unjustified aggression, particularly unnecessary as they are already afraid of him. In fact, the narrator tells us, this important person is “a kind man at heart,” but attaining the rank of general has completely confused his behavior (416). In the company of equals he remains a decent man, but in the company of inferiors he is “as bad as could be” (416). He prevents himself from joining in on conversations with inferiors in a way that is unfortunate because he himself does not wish to act in that way. He has the sense that it would be much more enjoyable to join in, but is stopped by the thought that it is beneath his rank, becoming known in the process as “a most boring person” (416).
Akaky comes to this important person to plead his case. The important person makes Akaky wait in the anteroom for no particular reason, indeed mostly to show a visiting acquaintance and old childhood friend how important he has become. When Akaky enters, he says, “What can I do for you?” in a voice that the narrator tells us the important person practiced alone in the mirror for a week prior to attaining the rank of general (417). Akaky is flustered, explaining that he wishes for the important person to intercede on his behalf in the quest to find his overcoat. The important person takes offense at the fact that Akaky has not followed the procedure of petitioning in the chancellery, from which it would pass to a chief clerk, then a section chief, then the important person’s secretary, and finally the important person himself. Akaky, deeply nervous and sweating profusely, protests meekly that he has come directly to the important person because he has doubts about the reliability of secretaries. At this statement the important person throws a fit, declaiming the insubordination of “the young” these days, even though Akaky is almost fifty (418). He raises his voice to a level that would be frightful to anyone, let alone someone as delicate as Akaky. Akaky faints and must be carried out by the caretakers. The important person, for his part, is pleased by the unprecedented effect of his words, and looks over to his friend, who indeed now looks uncertain and afraid himself.
Analysis
A notable feature of “The Overcoat” is its consistent comic tone and frequent employment of verbal irony and satire. Gogol’s sardonic gaze is all-encompassing: nobody escapes being the subject of Gogol’s satire. However, Gogol’s satire often has the specific goal of lampooning bureaucracy and deflating societal obsession with status and rank. The character of the “certain important person” represents the peak of Gogol’s satire of these preoccupations with bureaucracy and social status, two things which are interrelated. Where characters like the “certain important person” in this story are more preoccupied with increasing their social status and with following set procedures, it often produces corruption and cruelty, another theme of the story.
The satire of bureaucracy is conveyed by the absurd journey on which Akaky must embark in order to have the theft of his overcoat addressed. Arguably, it is only because of bureaucratic corruption that the theft can take place in the first instance. Though the policeman in the square later claims to have thought that Akaky and the thieves were simply friends greeting each other, what seems more likely is that the policeman has at least turned a blind eye to, if not in fact colluded in, the robbery. The light turns on in the sentry box when Akaky enters the square, suggesting that somebody was watching there. (Here Gogol also makes fun of Akaky, who decides that since he feels unsafe the best thing to do will be to walk across the square with his eyes closed until he reaches the other side.) However, no one comes to help Akaky when he struggles and shouts, and instead of helping him seek the thieves when Akaky runs up to him, the policeman instead tells him that he should go see the inspector the next morning.
This is the beginning of Akaky’s long and absurd entanglement with corruption and status-obsessed bureaucrats, all the more tragic because he as an individual is so unconcerned with such things and wishes only to be able to live out his modest life in peace. It becomes apparent that this is a system of governance where who you know and who you are willing to pander to matters more than justice, efficiency, or the reasonableness of any individual’s claim. Already, when he returns home, Akaky’s landlady tells him that he should not go to the inspector because the inspector will cheat him, and that he should instead go to the superintendent, to whom the landlady has a vague connection because her old cook now works for him as a nanny. When he goes to the superintendent the next morning, he is denied a meeting three times with seemingly bogus excuses, before Akaky demands with uncharacteristic assertiveness to see the superintendent. When he finally meets with the superintendent, the superintendent completely refuses to pay attention to the matter at hand, instead throwing out distractions and badgering Akaky about why he was out late at night until the meeting is over and Akaky leaves so flustered that he is unsure whether anything will be done. At every turn Akaky is frustrated by the system.
The character of the “important person” represents the apex of this satire. Probably because he has only recently been promoted, the “important person” is intent on demonstrating his influence at every turn, and Gogol highlights how this insecurity moves him to institute all sorts of useless and inefficient procedures in order to shore up his social status. Another example of Gogol’s satire of this figure is the moment when the “certain important person” is shown intimidating Akaky Akakievich. The narrator tells us that he speaks in a “voice abrupt and firm,” but also that this specific voice is one the important person “had purposely studied beforehand in his room, alone and in front of a mirror, a week prior to receiving his present post and the rank of general.” This deflates the general’s authority and renders him somewhat ridiculous. However, Gogol also shows the futility of this obsession: the “important person” is especially cruel to Akaky because a childhood friend of the general’s is visiting who he wishes to impress and show how far he has come in life. Ironically, the friend is certainly impressed, but not in a positive way: he too becomes rather afraid, and seems no longer sure of who it is that his friend has become.
Self-reflexivity, which was previously discussed in Part 1, is an important feature of “The Overcoat” not merely in itself or even because it sets the story’s familiar and conspiratorial tone but because it allows Gogol to play around with literary convention. In fact, he often acknowledges and makes fun of literary convention in order to break with it. This is apparent in the way that the narration oscillates between a traditional form of third-person omniscient narration that can include free-indirect speech, and a self-conscious, subjective narration that admits its own limitations in a way that can be purposefully contradictory. For example, the narrator first admits that his memory is failing and he cannot recall where the clerk who hosted the party lived. However, having said this, the narrator then transitions back to a kind of omniscient third-person narration that is very sure of itself, creating a direct contrast with the subjectivity that he has just admitted: “Akaky Akakievich had first to pass through some deserted, sparsely lit streets, but as he approached the clerk’s home, the streets became livelier, more populous, and better lit.” In this way, Gogol exposes the fact that even stories that seem to be told by narrators with perfect knowledge nonetheless originate from an specific person with imperfect knowledge.
