"The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol aroused in me a yearning for a class discussion in Honors Modern World Literature. Instead, I pose some questions and thoughts myself, hoping one would read the story and offer some input.
I read the story because after reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri I could not let the themes resonate without reading the story that is alluded to throughout the novel.
Below is an excerpt of an interview on “Book Browse” with Jhumpa Lahiri:
"You quote Dostoyevsky as saying, 'We all came out of Gogol's overcoat.' Has Nikolai Gogol had any influence on you as a writer?
I'm not sure influence is the right word. I don't turn to Gogol as consistently as I do to certain other writers when I'm struggling with character or language. His writing is more overtly comic, more antic and absurd than mine tends to be. But I admire his work enormously and reread a lot of it as I was working on the novel, in addition to reading biographical material. "The Overcoat" is such a superb story. It really does haunt me the way it haunts the character of Ashoke in the novel. I like to think that every writer I admire influences me in some way, by teaching me something about writing. Of course, without the inspiration of Nikolai Gogol, without his name and without his writing, my novel would never have been conceived. In that respect, this book came out of Gogol's overcoat, quite literally."
The overcoat itself alters Akakii Akakievich’s life immensely. The warmth, security and pride Akakievich feels when he wears it causes his colleagues to take note of him. They change their attitude towards him because he now wears a coat that fits into his peer’s view of social status. Writing that I can’t help but to think of the status placed in wearing expensive name brands that reveal immediately the price that was paid for the item. I see this regularly in high school. Adolescence tend to value the socioeconomic status that clothes portray.
(Personal Connection) I recall wearing a simple sky blue Polo sweater to work, one that was at least twenty years old. A student who often wore Polo clothes complimented me. I thought that it must be because it was Polo because I have an identical white Gap sweater and I have never received a compliment on it. I’m not saying that receiving a compliment merits the clothes. But the brand certainly impacted this student’s simple “I like your sweater.”
Akakievich’s new winter coat causes change in his life because of the financial strain placed upon him. Compassion and acceptance, in addition to the protection from the cold, shift Akakievich’s disposition. “That whole day was truly a most triumphant festival day for Akakii Akakievich. He returned home in the most happy frame of mind…” (Gogol).
He was even invited to a party on account of his new coat, and upon leaving the event “Akakii Akakievich went on in a happy frame of mind: he even started to run, without knowing why…” (Gogol). However, the story changes from here and offers, as any great Russian writer must, a social commentary.
The character named Gogol in Lahiri’s novel puts on his overcoat metaphorically when he legally changes his name. Unlike Akakievich, Gogol’s life was not lonely and empty because of his mundane existence. In fact the only time Gogol was mocked in the novel (to my recollection) was when his sister affectionately called him “Goggles.” Gogol puts the pressure on himself. It’s as if he feels haunted by the name that meant nothing to him; it is only later he learns of the origin of his name from his father. I question what caused Gogol’s discomfort. Akakievich was unbothered by his peer’s mockery of his shabby overcoat and his lack of desire to achieve more. But Gogol deliberately avoided his family and filled his life with new people who only knew him as Nikhil, his new name.
Being content and satisfied in life drives my idea of success. Akakievich was successful prior to needing his new overcoat because he was at peace with his life. Gogol was not fulfilled until he came to accept the role his family played in his life.
Another great Russian writer, Anton Chekhov explores success in his short story “Gooseberries.” The plot involves the brother Ivan Ivanovitch telling his friends the story of his brother who spent his whole life working for a home with gooseberry bushes in the yard. Once he obtains the house, Ivan visits and cannot believe that his brother is content. He rants about it to his listeners:
"I saw a happy man whose cherished dream was so obviously fulfilled, who had attained his object in life, who had gained what he wanted, who was satisfied with his fate and himself. There is always, for some reason, an element of sadness mingled with my thoughts of human happiness, and, on this occasion, at the sight of a happy man I was overcome by an oppressive feeling that was close upon despair. It was particularly oppressive at night. A bed was made up for me in the room next to my brother's bedroom, and I could hear that he was awake, and that he kept getting up and going to the plate of gooseberries and taking one. I reflected how many satisfied, happy people there really are! 'What a suffocating force it is! You look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying. . . . Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there is not one who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their silly nonsense, getting married, growing old, serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. . . . Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition. . . . And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It's a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him -- disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer; the happy man lives at his ease, and trivial daily cares faintly agitate him like the wind in the aspen-tree -- and all goes well.
That night I realized that I, too, was happy and contented,” Ivan Ivanovitch went on, getting up. “I, too, at dinner and at the hunt liked to lay down the law on life and religion, and the way to manage the peasantry. I, too, used to say that science was light, that culture was essential, but for the simple people reading and writing was enough for the time. Freedom is a blessing, I used to say; we can no more do without it than without air, but we must wait a little. Yes, I used to talk like that, and now I ask, 'For what reason are we to wait?' " asked Ivan Ivanovitch, looking angrily at Burkin. "Why wait, I ask you? What grounds have we for waiting? I shall be told, it can't be done all at once; every idea takes shape in life gradually, in its due time. But who is it says that? Where is the proof that it's right? You will fall back upon the natural order of things, the uniformity of phenomena; but is there order and uniformity in the fact that I, a living, thinking man, stand over a chasm and wait for it to close of itself, or to fill up with mud at the very time when perhaps I might leap over it or build a bridge across it? And again, wait for the sake of what? Wait till there's no strength to live? And meanwhile one must live, and one wants to live!"
This story, discussed at length in Honors Short Fiction, troubles me. I repeatedly think of the man with hammer knocking on the conscience of my being. Is my contentment at the expense of others? Should I give any money I have to charities? The questions can get quite absurd when I think of it now. Being aware as I am of some of the worldly suffering does not make me a terrible person. What I do with my awareness is what matters. Ivanovitch says at the end of his lecture, “one wants to live.” Of course. Living involves consuming products and food and entertainment. Wearing nice clothes is not a terrible thing. Flaunting it can be awful and excluding others because of it can also be a wicked thing too. But most of us don’t do that.
Reading rouses my conscience. It probes the ideas I already have and provides more material to construct my voice. These pieces challenge me to consider the necessity of an overcoat. Lahiri explained that Gogol “had spent years maintaining distance from his origins…and yet it had not been possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name…” (Lahiri 281, 287). The overcoat never left him as much as he wanted it to. Akakievich’s overcoat, literally stolen, caused his death. One must have warmth and security. The coats that provide that in our lives must be recognized and treasured so they last a long time.
