Questions about "The Overcoat"

1. Why is copying an "interesting, pleasant world" (p. 276) for Akaky? Why doesn't he want to do other kinds of copying (p. 276-277)?

2. Why does Gogol diminish the importance of Petrovich and his wife if he mentions both several times? (p. 280)

3. Why is Akaky so upset by Petrovich's insistence that he needs a new overcoat? Is it really just about the expense?
-- What does the overcoat, old dressing gown or new overcoat, signify for Akaky?

4. Does "The Overcoat" contain a critique of the social structure of Russian in Gogol's time? (For example, in the fact that Akaky's ghost ignores this social structure by pulling coats off of people "without regard for rank or title") (p. 303).

5. How does the new overcoat change Akaky's relationship with his co-workers? In what way are his interactions with them different? The same? Specifically, is his fellow clerks' sudden interest in celebrating Akaky's new overcoat just another way to make fun of him without him realizing it? (p.290-293)

6. Why does Akaky say, "No, it would be better not to look" (p. 294) and then cross the dark square with his eyes closed only to be attacked?

7. Who attacks Akaky in the square and steals his overcoat? (p. 294)

8. What role does the supernatural play in this fairly realistic, if comic, story? (p. 303-308)

9. Why does the Important Personage only regret his habitual severity after his interaction with Akaky? (p. 304-305)

10. Why the second ghost at the end? (p. 308) Who is it supposed to be?

11. Gogol says of Akaky, "It would be unfair to say that no attention had ever been paid to him" (p. 276) and also, "No one had ever paid him the slightest attention" (p. 302). Which statement is true?

12. Is this story a comic-tragedy or a tragic-comedy?

Nabokov on Gogol

New Directions published a short book entitled Nikolai Gogol by Vladimir Nabokov in 1944*. Nabokov went on to achieve fame in his own right as a novelist with works such as Lolita and Pale Fire.

Here's some of what Nabokov has to say about our featured work this month, "The Overcoat," by Gogol:

"The plot of the Overcoat is very simple. A poor little clerk makes a great decision and orders a new overcoat. The coat while in the making becomes the dream of his life. On the very first night that he wears it he is robbed of it on a dark street. He dies of grief and his ghost haunts the city. This is all in the way of plot, but of course the real plot (as always with Gogol) lies in the style, in the inner structure of this transcendental anecdote. In order to appreciate it at its true worth one must perform a kind of mental somersault so as to get rid of conventional values in literature and follow the author along the dream road of his superhuman imagination. Gogol's world is somewhat related to such conceptions of modern physics as the "Concertina Universe" or the "Explosion Universe" ; it is far removed from the comfortably revolving clockwork worlds of the last century. There is curvature in literary style as there is curvature in space, -- but few are the Russian readers who do care to plunge into Gogol's magic chaos head first, with no restraint or regret. The Russian who thinks Turgenev was a great writer, and bases his notion of Pushkin upon Chaikovsky's vile libretti, will merely paddle into the gentlest wavelets of Gogol's mysterious sea and limit his reaction to an enjoyment of what he takes to be whimsical humor and colorful quips. But the diver, the seeker for black pearls, the man who prefers the monsters of the deep to the sunshades of the beach, will find in the Overcoat shadows linking our state of existence to those other states and modes which we dimly apprehend in our rare moments of irrational perception. The prose of Pushkin is three-dimensional; that of Gogol is four-dimensional, at least."

"So, to sum up: the story goes this way: mumble, mumble, lyrical wave, mumble, lyrical wave, mumble, lyrical wave, mumble, lyrical wave, mumble, lyrical wave, mumble, fantastic climax, mumble, mumble, and back into the chaos from which they all had derived."

Do you agree with Nabokov's take on "The Overcoat"?

*From Nabokov, Vladimir, Nikolai Gogol, New York: New Directions, corrected 1961 edition.