The Overcoat

Summary

The Overcoat is a short story by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842 in the third volume of his collected works. It is the best known of his Petersburg tales and tells of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, a poor copying clerk in a government department. Akaky is a perpetual titular councillor, low in the official ranks, mocked by younger clerks and content with his task of copying documents, which he performs with love; when he is given a slightly more demanding assignment, he cannot manage it. The bitter St. Petersburg winter makes his old, thin overcoat unwearable, and the one-eyed tailor Petrovich declares it beyond repair. A new coat will cost eighty rubles, an enormous sum for Akaky. He saves for months by going without tea and candles in the evening and walking carefully to spare his shoes, and the thought of the coat fills his life with a new purpose. When the coat is finally made, his colleagues celebrate it, and a senior colleague gives a party in its honor. On the way home through a deserted square late at night, two men rob him of the coat. Akaky seeks help from the police and then from an official described only as a 'person of consequence', who, eager to impress a visitor, berates him for his presumption. Akaky leaves in terror, catches a fever in the freezing wind and dies within days. The department simply replaces him. Soon rumors spread that a ghost is seizing overcoats from passers-by at night near the Kalinkin bridge. The ghost finally pulls the coat from the person of consequence himself, who is chastened by the experience, after which the apparition stops; another ghost is reported, but it is taller and has a moustache. The story combines comedy, pathos and the fantastic. Its narrator digresses, jokes and pauses on absurd details, but also includes a moment in which a young clerk hears in Akaky's plea to be left alone the words 'I am thy brother'. Later Russian writers saw it as a founding work of their tradition, and a remark that 'we all came out from Gogol's overcoat', often attributed to Dostoevsky, expresses its influence on the fiction of the 'little man'.

Top Lessons

• The 'little man'

  Akaky is insignificant to everyone around him. The story invites readers to notice people whom institutions overlook.

• Comedy and pathos

  Gogol's narrator jokes about Akaky even while showing his suffering. Students can examine how tone shapes a reader's sympathy.

• Rank and power

  The person of consequence treats Akaky harshly to display his own importance. The story examines how hierarchy affects behavior.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Akaky's death follows a fever caught in the freezing wind after his humiliation; the story links shock, exposure and fatal illness in a period before germ theory.

• The Cloak

  Akaky's fever, delirium and death after the visit to the person of consequence.