The Overcoat
The overcoat–worn so thin it resembles cheesecloth–is hardly sufficient for the bone-numbing winters of Saint Petersburg. The laughingstock of the city, it’s the bane of Akaky Akakievich’s existence, a constant reminder of his position as a low-ranking bureaucratic functionary unable to perform any but the simplest of office tasks. It’s no wonder that when he’s able to scrape together the rubles for a lavish new coat, his entire life changes. No longer the subject of mockery, he’s looked upon with respect by his colleagues, admired by his landlady, and accepted into bourgeois society–introduced to a way of life so foreign to his drab little existence that when the new overcoat is rudely stolen, the loss literally kills him.
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Written in 1842, Nikolay Gogol’s surreal comic masterwork still functions as a surprisingly contemporary critique of the pettiness of materialism and capitalist society. Having recently traded in a ratty-ass down jacket for a more respectable overcoat, I can attest to the jarring and somewhat alienating way in which a slight change in winter apparel can affect the way one is regarded, how the words “Just throw it on the bed” are replaced by “Let me hang that up,” and how “I’ve got a bottle of Shout if you want to get that ink stain out” becomes “Do you mind if I feel the fabric?”
Akakievich’s beloved maroon overcoat first appears as a ghostly apparition, a 12-foot puppet hovering above him enticingly. When the henpecked tailor Petrovich (who wears a giant pincushion as a hat) fashions Akaky’s overcoat, the process is represented by a comic, almost Seussian dance involving a giant pair of scissors. The revelry of bourgeois society is represented by a pitcher of flowers and lavishly set table descending from the ceiling on a pulley, in the style of a Buster Keaton short. And in a truly inspired moment filled with the fanciful pathos of Gogol’s writing, Akaky’s change in self-conception when he dons his new overcoat is represented by an image of him flying, sailing past a miniature puppet of his landlady.
