The Overcoat
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- For the Russian animated film, see The Overcoat (animated film).
"The Overcoat" (Russian: Шинель, Shinel; sometimes translated as "The Cloak") is the title of a short story by Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, thus spawning the phrase which has been variously attributed to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev.: "We all came out of Gogol's 'Overcoat'." The story has been adapted into a variety of stage and film interpretations.
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[edit] Summary
The story centers on the life and death of Akaky Akakievich, an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. Akaky is dedicated to his job, taking special relish in the hand-copying of documents, though he receives little recognition for his hard work. Instead, the younger clerks in his department tease him and attempt to distract him whenever they can. His threadbare overcoat is often the butt of their jokes. Akaky decides it is necessary to have the coat repaired, so he brings it to his tailor, Petrovich. Petrovich declares that the coat is unsalvageable, and tells Akaky he must purchase a new one.
The cost of a new overcoat is far beyond Akaky's meager salary, so he forces himself to adhere to a strict budget in order to save sufficient money to buy the coat. In the meantime, he and Petrovich meet frequently to discuss the specifics of the new coat. During this time, Akaky's zeal for copying is replaced with excitement about his new overcoat, to the point where he can think of little else. Finally, with the addition of an unexpectedly large holiday bonus, Akaky has saved enough to purchase a new overcoat.
Akaky and Petrovitch go to the various shops around St. Petersberg and pick out the finest quality materials which they can afford (they cannot afford beaver fur, for example, but they get the best cat skin that is available). The new coat is of impressively good quality and appearance, and is the talk of Akaky's office on the day he arrives wearing it. His superior clerk hosts a party in honor of the new overcoat, at which habitually solitary Akaky seems rather out of place.
Akaky eventually heads home from the party, far later that he would normally be out. On the way home, he is confronted by two ruffians who take his coat, kick him down, and leave him unconscious in the snow.
Akaky finds no help from the authorities in recovering his lost overcoat. At last, he seeks help from a "Very Important Person" (sometimes called the prominent person, person of consequence, or other epithets that denote respect), a general of high rank, on the advice of one of the clerks in his office. The narrator points out that the general makes a habit out of belittling subordinates in an attempt to appear more important than he truly is. After keeping Akaky waiting a long time unnecessarily, he demands of Akaky exactly why he has brought such a trivial matter to him personally and not presented it to his secretary (which was the established order of procedure to separate the Very Important Person from the lesser clerks). Akaky, somewhat inept socially, makes an unflattering remark concerning departmental secretaries, provoking an outburst of scolding from the general so powerful that Akaky nearly faints and has to be assisted from the room. Soon after, Akaky falls ill with a fever and it seems likely that he will die. In his last hours, he becomes delirious and imagines he is again sitting before the Very Important Person, who is again scolding him. At first, Akaky pleads for forgiveness, but as his end draws near, he curses the general.
It is soon reported that Akaky's corpse (often translated as "ghost", though Gogol clearly used "corpse") haunts areas of St. Petersburg and takes overcoats from people's backs. The police refuse to approach him to stop him. Finally Akaky's corpse catches up with the Very Important Person, who had since been feeling very guilty about his treatment of Akaky, and takes his overcoat, scaring him severely in the process. Apparently satisfied, Akaky is not seen again. The narrator ends with the account of another ghost being seen in another part of town, but this one was larger, muscled, and had a moustache.
[edit] Interpretations
Gogol makes much of Akaky's name in the opening passages, saying, "It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched; but he may feel assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other name..." In one way, the name Akaky Akakievich is similar to "John Johnson" and has similar comedic value; it also communicates Akaky's role as an everyman. Moreover, the name sounds strikingly similar to the word "obkakat'" in Russian, a word which means "to smear with excrement,"[1] or kaka, which means "defecator."
Some interpretations state that the story is essentially a religious parable, with the character of Akaky Akakievich standing in for Jesus Christ. In these interpretations, Akaky's humility evokes the teachings of Christ, his brief foray into society is seen as the temptation of Christ, and his death and eventual rematerialization as a ghost parallel Christ's death and eventual resurrection. [2] Other interpretations claim that The Overcoat is a form of social protest, though critics of this interpretation, including writer Vladimir Nabokov, believe that while it is certainly feasible, it is also narrow-minded and fails to get at the meat of Gogol's true meaning. [3]
Akaky progresses from an introverted, hopeless but functioning non-entity with no expectations of social or material success to one whose self-esteem and thereby expectations are raised by the overcoat. Co-workers start noticing him and complimenting him on his coat and he ventures out into the social world. His hopes are quickly dashed by the theft of the coat. He attempts to enlist the police in recovery of the coat and employs some inept rank jumping by going to a very important and high ranking individual but his lack of status (perhaps lack of the coat) is obvious and he is treated with distain. He is plunged into illness (depression?) and cannot function. He dies quickly and without putting up much of a fight. The overcoat is a philosophical tale in the tradition of a stoic philosopher or Schopenhauer.
The story's ending has sparked great debate amongst literary scholars, who disagree about the existence, purpose, and disappearance of Akaky's ghost. Edward Proffitt theorized that the ghost did not, in fact, exist at all and that Gogol used the ghost as a means of parodying literary convention. Proponents of the view that the story is a form of social protest prefer to see the ghost's attack on the Very Important Person as a reversal of power from the oppressor to the oppressed. Yet another view states that Akaky's return from the grave is symbolic of society's collective remorse, experienced as a result of failing to treat Akaky with compassion.
[edit] Films
A number of films have used the story, both in the Soviet Union and in other countries. Versions have been made in 2001, 1997, 1959, 1952 and 1926 (see The Overcoat (film)). One film is currently in the process of being made: animation director Yuriy Norshteyn has been slowly and labouriously working on a (presumably) full-length animated film version of 'The Overcoat' since 1981. A couple of short, low-resolution clips from the project have been made available: [4] and [5].
[edit] Ballet
The Russian composer German Okunev was working on a ballet version on 'The Overcoat' at the time of his death in 1973: it was completed and orchestrated by V. Sapozhnikov.
A recent adaptation by Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling, including music by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, was performed using dance and mime. [6]
[edit] Trivia
The phrase "We all came out of Gogol's 'Overcoat'." has a witty copy used in talks on philosophic topics: "we all came out of Hegel's overcoat" [7] (in Russian Hegel is written as Гегель and pronounced as Gegel)
In Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake, "The Overcoat" is central to the plot, and the namesake of the protagonist is Gogol.
[edit] References
- Gogol, Nicolai V. The Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1965
- Graffy, Julian Gogol's The Overcoat: Critical Studies in Russian Literature London: Bristol Classical Press, 2000.
- Proffitt, Edward Gogol's `Perfectly True' Tale: `The Overcoat' and Its Mode of Closure, in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter, 1977, pp. 35-40
