There are novels ten times the length (or more) that say one tenth as much. I'm tempted to learn Russian so as to penetrate what's so clearly there, yet lost in translation. Also, skaz. ( )

An excellent story which shows loss of humanity and concern for each other. People are busy in their own lives feeding their own happiness and ego, but they tend to forget that others are also important. But, nowadays people are happy trampling other's happiness under their own feet.

Akakii also wanted an overcoat which brought him immense happiness and recognition. But, the world had some other plans for him.

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Really good short story. Listened from an audiobook. It was a good experience. ( )

another cheery Russian

Having read Gogol's short stories before (e.g. Diary of a Madman, The Nose), I felt very familiar with the tone of the first couple pages of The Overcoat. Akaky Akakyevich is a quirky minor official with a funny name, and I was fully prepared to observe all the funny problems that would hound him. Then, as a young clerk was teasing him for being such a quirky man with a funny name, I read this:

And long afterward, at moments of the greatest gaiety, the figure of the humble little clerk with a bald patch on his head rose before him with his heartrending words: "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" and in those heartrending words he heard others: "I am your brother." And the poor young man hid his face in his hands, and many times afterwards in his life he shuddered, seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage brutality lies hidden under refined, cultured politeness, and my God! even in a man whom the world accepts as a gentleman and a man of honor...

Yowza. Not quite a story about a guy whose nose jumps off his face.

I've always felt most sympathetic towards characters that want nothing more than to be left to their own devices. I'm not talking about retired heroes who get called back into action when they just want to go fishing or whatever. I'm talking about losers, guys that aren't cool (I mean unkempt and uninteresting, not nerdy) and have never amounted to anything of any sort of social value but are self-sufficient and happy to forge on alone. Akaky Akakyevich isn't trying to climb the social ladder, start a family, or even interact with his coworkers. He's not asking for anything from anybody, and that's the real tragedy of his downfall.

This isn't Gogol's funniest work, but the juxtaposition of how Gogol views the St. Petersburg that he's created and how Akaky Akakyevich views the same city is amusing in its own way. Gogol makes it clear throughout almost all of his short stories that he cares very little for the "petty trivia," as he called it, of the contemporary Russian social order. The reader gets the sense that the rankings by which Russian society is arranged are arbitrary and useless, that bureaucracy is a hinderance to pretty much anything you'd want to accomplish, and that the letters that Akaky Akakyevich fervidly copies every day are largely superfluous.

But our hero doesn't see it that way. He respects his social superiors to the point where a browbeating at the hands of a "Person of Consequence" irreparably affects his health. He doesn't just value the work that he does; he makes it his entire life. Whether he values the content of the letters or just the simple repetition of the process (my guess is the latter), his whole world is dependent on the preservation of this system.

So can you hold the system responsible for Akaky Akakyevich's ruin? While it certainly isn't blameless, there are plenty of titular counsellors doing meaningless jobs that don't lose their minds over an overcoat.

Akaky Akakyevich is a fragile man whose fragility had yet to be exposed only because of his simple, solitary lifestyle. Like his previous overcoat, the "dressing jacket," he was surviving in a threadbare manner that could only be held together for so long. When he needs a new overcoat, he is able to purchase one, but when he needs a new Akaky Akakyevich, there isn't one available. The new overcoat allows him to display himself, but the loss of that overcoat leaves him exposed, and he is no longer able to patch over his shortcomings.

The Overcoat is great as a standalone work, but its influence is even greater. Dostoevsky said, "[Russian authors] all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'," and if you've read much of Russian lit before checking this out, you can feel it in every word. ( )