The Dis-Mantled

A certain meticulous copyist, a bibulous tailor, a prominent personage, and a coat-stealing ghost walk into a short story by “Russia’s most baffling comic writer” Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). Satirical and sobering, The Overcoat depicts the smallness of human concerns and the smallness of human hearts in the life of a ‘nobody’ dealing with exposure, humiliation, and public injustices. The Overcoat covers the dehumanizing problems of the “little man.”

The “little man” is a theme employed in 19th century Russian literature: “Due to his low social and career position, the “little man” had a difficult fate, which consisted only of difficulties and obstacles. “Little Man,” modest and meek in nature, was forced to endure humiliation. No one ever noticed such people who were completely defenseless against circumstances, no one helped them, which is why the life of a “little man” ended very tragically.”

The main character in The Overcoat is an unremarkable figure – a low-ranking government clerk. He is portrayed as a raw stripped-down version of humanity. He is a ghost of a man in the sense that his place in society is little or completely invisible.

Clerk Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin lives a meager existence. He wears a patched-up overcoat that, with much wear, has also becomes meager. It doesn’t keep out the cold of the St. Petersburg winter.

Gogol’s clerk is also a “little man” in that his vital interests are extremely narrow, his world small. His self-contentment is derived from his copying work. There is something almost petty about his solitary life dedicated to repetitive work.

Unmarried and not gregarious, he doesn’t copy others who wanted more in life. Unlike many of his coworkers, he indulges in no diversion of any kind, not even the taste of his soup at night, to focus on copying. He goes to bed, after copying papers for pure enjoyment, “smiling at the thought of the next day and wondering what God would send him to copy.”

Of Akaky, Gogol writes:

“. . . in a certain department there was a certain official—not a very high one, it must be allowed—short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and short-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. . .  he was what is called a perpetual titular councilor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry, and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.”

We learn that Akaky was given his father’s name, making him a copy of his father, a government official. When baby Akaky was christened, it was said that “he wept and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councilor.”

(A titular councilor was ranked at 9 out of l4 grades in the hierarchy of government positions.)

Akaky is seen as unchanging fixture and not human:

“When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same attitude, the same occupation; so that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in undress uniform with a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. . . His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.”

Akaky’s job was to copy official documents by hand and he is diligent in doing so. He worked, “as his companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.” Akaky doesn’t hate his uninteresting job:

“It is not enough to say that Akaky labored with zeal: no, he labored with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment was written on his face: some letters were even favorites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have been made even a councilor of state.”

When given an opportunity to advance and do more – change titles and edit pronouns – Akaky tries the new work, gets flustered and says “No, give me rather something to copy.” He does not want to deviate from his first love – the repetitive work of copying. (He seems to spend a lot of time in his head. He does have an imagination as we find out later.)

“Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes: his undress uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty- meal color.   Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day in the street. . . Akaky Akakievitch saw in all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines . . . “

And though Akaky kept to himself and minded his own business, he is nonetheless made sport of by those around him. He is a running joke in the office. His overcoat – “they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape.”

But Akaky silently endures ridicule from co-workers, asserting himself only when they go too far. (He reminds of the quirky oft-rejected collator, Milton Waddams, in the movie Office Space.)

“The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakievitch answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work: amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter.”

Then one time, Akaky does protest the harassment: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”

These words affect a new hire who had participated in the constant teasing:

“In these moving words, other words resounded —” I am thy brother.” And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and noble.

Akaky is chaffed, not only by his fellow workers, but also by St. Petersburg’s Northern cold. His overcoat is threadbare and unable to fend off the icy wind. He goes to see his tailor, Petrovich, the imbiber, for another patch job. Living on a meager salary, Akaky goes to Petrovich with a budget amount in mind.

Seeing the state of the coat – “the cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces” – the tailor balks at any more repair. Akaky is told that the coat is beyond salvation and he needs a new one. Hearing this, Akaky is beside himself. He doesn’t have the money on hand to pay for a new overcoat. After an unsuccessful back and forth with the tailor in hopes of another patch job, Akaky sets out on a singular life-mission to buy a new coat.

Pinching his salary of only four hundred rubles, he begins living an ascetic lifestyle for the space of one year. He curtails his living expenses and doesn’t eat at night. Less food, more imagination, and a labor of love for Akaky:

“He even got used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak. From that time forth his existence seemed to become, in some way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented to travel along life’s path with him, the friend being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a goal.”

The desired overcoat becomes a substitute for the bond of normal human love. Is it also a symbol of dignity that needs repair? A chance at survival?

 Akaky is finally able to get the money together to buy the material needed for the coat. He is overjoyed with it. He wears the overcoat to work and coworkers notice it. Gaining new status among them, he is invited to a party that night to celebrate the new coat and a birthday.

Leaving the poor side of town, Akaky crosses St. Petersburg square to reach the party. He muses about the people living on the other side of town. For one night he becomes a socialite, joining in the food and fun. Around midnight, he picks up his coat from the floor, brushes it off, and heads home.

On his way he is assaulted by two thugs who steal the garment. The Square’s watchman is no help. His landlady tells him he must go straight to the district chief of police. She has some connection with him.

Akaky goes to the district chief of police and finds that he is never makes himself available. When Akaky finally asserts himself and gets in to see him, the chief of police, instead of listening to the stollen overcoat matter, begins to question Akaky about his late-night behavior – as if Akaky was to blame for the stolen coat. He leaves the office not knowing what will happen.

A co-worker, “moved by pity, resolved to help Akaky Akakievitch.” He tells Akaky that the best thing for him to do is to go see a certain prominent personage who would expedite the matter.

“The reader must know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person.”

To increase his image, the prominent personage copied the protocol of what he saw being done by those in positions above him. For “In Holy Russia all is thus contaminated with the love of imitation; every man imitates and copies his superior.”

And so it was that “The manners and customs of the prominent personage were grand and imposing, but rather exaggerated. The main foundation of his system was strictness. “Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!”

Akaky arrives at the office of the prominent personage and has to wait. The prominent personage is in no hurry. When Akaky finally appears before him in his worn undress uniform, he gets a curt greeting: “What do you want?” Fearful and confused, Akaky explains that his new overcoat was stolen and that he came to him as an intermediary with the police.

The prominent personage then upbraids Akaky for not strictly following protocol. Akaky did not go through the layers of bureaucracy leading up to the prominent personage.

“But, your excellency,” said Akaky Akakievitch, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, “I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—are an untrustworthy race.”

This response is taken as another breach of etiquette and the prominent personage goes ballistic:

“What, what, what!” . . . “Do you know to whom you speak? Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? do you realize it? I ask you!” Then he stamped his foot and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakievitch.”

Akaky is stunned and becomes weak. He has to be held up and carried out by porters. The prominent personage is quite pleased with himself “that his word could even deprive a man of his senses.”

Coatless Akaky staggers home slack-jawed in St. Petersburg snow and cold, the wind blowing from everywhere. He catches a cold that becomes a severe fever and dies. Enter the ghost. And justice?

I’ll not say more so you can read what develops. My purpose here is to introduce the story.

I see the overcoat as symbolic of different viewpoints:

For Gogol, the old threadbare overcoat represents bar-bone humanity. How much can be removed from a person’s life before the person is gone? For Akaky, it meant just getting by with another patch job.

The idea of the future coat, as imagined by Akaky, represented no longer being cut off from life. The new threads are a life-line. When he finally gets the new overcoat, it represents a goal achieved, a baseline of survival in the cold, and acceptance in society where appearances matter.

For thugs, the new overcoat represented an object of illicit desire – “But, of course, the cloak is mine!” For the victim, Akaky, the dis-mantling meant a life changed forever.

For bureaucratic overlords, the stolen overcoat represented a nuisance. They could make better use of their time. They amuse their selves with their selves.

And for the ghost, the dis-mantling of the prominent personage represented justice for the dis-mantled “little man:

“Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that—by the collar! I need your cloak; you took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me; so now give up your own.”

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Though you might not be a fan of Russian literature, Gogol’s last short story The Overcoat is considered one of the best in Russian literature and worth a read. And you are likely someone who can relate to those who are made fun off, insulted, considered unworthy, acknowledged only in negative terms, ignored by society, shown disrespect by bureaucrats, and robbed of dignity and life by those who boost themselves up by pushing others down

Both realistic and supernatural, The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol is an appeal for compassion for the barely visible “little man” and the dis-mantled.

The Overcoat, short story by Nikolay Gogol, published in Russian as “Shinel” in 1842. The Overcoat is perhaps the best-known and most influential short fiction in all of Russian literature. Gogol’s Dead Souls and “The Overcoat” are considered the foundation of 19th-century Russian realism.

The Overcoat | Russian Literature, Satire, Comedy | Britannica

From the Father of the Golden Age of Russian Literature, Nicolai Gogol’s The Overcoat is one of the greatest short stories of all time. This satire on Russia’s 19th century bureaucracy is amusing, pointed and has influenced many renowned Russian writers.

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol | Goodreads

Gogol was also capable of piercing insight into the human condition, satirizing the banality of everyday life while not losing sight of the pathos of those who struggle to rise above it.

“Absolute nonsense”–Gogol’s tales | The New Criterion

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Another unnoticed fixture?

A 60-year-old Arizona Wells Fargo employee scanned into her office on a Friday on what appeared to be an ordinary workday. Then, four days later, she was found dead in her cubicle.

Officials probe death of Wells Fargo employee found in her cubicle 4 days after last scanning into work (nbcnews.com)

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