The Overcoat Summary | Chapterly
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol: A Complete Summary "We all come out from Gogol's Overcoat." — Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky Overview The Overcoat (1842) is one of the most important short stories ever written. Dostoevsky allegedly said, "We all come out from Gogol's Overcoat," and the claim is barely an exaggeration. This story of a lowly copying clerk who saves for a new overcoat, briefly experiences joy when he receives it, and is destroyed when it is stolen, established the template for Russian literature's compassion for the "little man" and its critique of bureaucratic indifference. Gogol's genius lies in his tone, which shifts constantly between comedy and pathos, satire and sympathy. Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin is absurd: a man so diminished that his entire existence revolves around copying documents. But he is also human, and when the world crushes him, the reader feels it. The story's final supernatural twist, in which Akaky's ghost haunts the streets of St. Petersburg stealing overcoats from the powerful, adds a dimension of justice that reality denies. The story is barely thirty pages long. Its influence is immeasurable. Plot Summary Akaky Akakievich Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin is a low-ranking copying clerk in a St. Petersburg government department....