The Overcoat Sparknotes

In Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat, Akaky Akakievich’s perspective of life changes as he goes through a journey of events. It all changes through the purchase of a certain new overcoat, replacing his old, tattered one. Akaky has no concerns for how he is portrayed by those around him because he embraces the life he is trapped in. That is, at least, until he gets a new overcoat. This overcoat brings about new meaning to his life, and his colleagues are happy that he has finally seen the light of day. The story starts off about this mild, easy-going man whose goal in life is to be as antisocial as possible, ignoring the whole world. Akaky is a copying clerk at some unknown department where he transcribes papers all day. He even takes papers to transcribe at home. If he doesn’t have what to copy, he’d make something up. The head clerk’s assistant would shove papers in front of him without even saying anything. Akaky is

The higher the class, the more obsessed with status and rank you were. They are consumed by this desire that their ability to act humanely becomes corrupt. Take the Person of Consequence for example. “He was, however, at heart a good-natured man, pleasant and obliging with his colleagues, but his advancement to a high rank had completely turned his head.” (Page 1027) Social mobility was essentially restricted because one is looked at with a certain reverence when in the same rank, but not so with a lower rank. When a person climbs up the ladder of the social hierarchy, he changes himself because he’s expected to act a certain way amongst his colleagues and a different one with outsiders. An individual becomes so entrenched in his new role that he destroys every bit of his old one, where he might have been nice and well tempered. Akaky too starts off as an easy-going person in the beginning of the story, but then transitions to a completely new person when he has his new