"The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol /essay/

Gogol is a representative of the Natural School in Russia. He publishes a collection of St Petersburg novels, which contains the novel "Dead Souls", the comedy "The Inspector General" and Marriage, as well as "The Overcoat". Gogol puts accent in his works on the absurd in the social sphere and uses grotesque to expose the moral deformation of the characters. In the story "The Overcoat"Gogol roughly looks at his characters. The absurd point is highlighted, and the truth about the power of the system, which keeps us in a monotonous everyday life and does not allow us to change and develop, is emphasized.

The main character is Akaki Akakievich. He is a clerk who is at the last step in the hierarchical system. The character is left to be trampled and humiliated. His colleagues scoff at his appearance, bruise him, tell him his shirt looks like a robe, and the only thing he tell, and it's rare, is Leave me, why are you insulting me? His existence is unfortunate because he has allowed the system to take away his dignity and thus has become a subject of mockery. Akaki is a small man. His life is nonsensical, and he himself defused, for there is no purpose to lead him on the way up, beyond the uniformity of everyday life. He has been copying documents all his life. His leaders changed, and he stayed in the same place always. Many people just go to him and throw a sheet of paper in front of him without even saying anything. However, Akakii has a great pleasure in writing. There are also favorite letters that make him smile, albeit involuntarily, while writing them. To his great surprise, they appointed a new boss who was sorry for the poor Akakai. He raised his current job. It was something new to him. He did not want to change anything or get any extra work. He strictly adhered to his life and continued to copy one to one. Monotony did not hinder it. He even prefers it to the new things. The character does not want to change anything in his life until the mockery touches him deeper. The laughing at his shirt, which is called a robe, is offended by the other officials. This is ambitious - at last there is a goal in his life. Akaky decides to change his robe with a brand new overcoat, sewn especially to him. The amount they report to him is unbearable at this point in his life, but he is determined to buy it. For several years, Akaky has limited himself and saves his money. His desire to own a new overcoat reflects his life and he starts to work extraordinary. Overwriting is not just his job, but also his fun, if that's the case, because all his time gives the transcript for a low salary.

As time passes, Akaky becomes more depicted. His life is identified with one thing. Gogol ironizes the character with sadness and grief. The narrator laughs through the tears of the blurred boundary between the human and the subject world. After several years of deprivation, Akaky achieves his goal with a new overcoat. It impresses everyone, and perhaps for the first time in his life he feels good. His colleagues even invite him to collect them and he accepts. After work, getting home, he does not have to copy for the first time in a long time. He can just sit back and rest. After this pleasant feeling of freedom, Akaky goes to the gathering. You go late from the pretty neighborhood. The closer your home approaches, the darker it gets around. He has to go through a square and there is an unthinkable someone in the dark who steals the acacia overcoat. The clerk calls for help, but in this wilderness no one answers. The square in the middle of the night is compared with a desert symbol of alienation to the people. He calls for help with a guard, but he is dismissed and neglected. He turns to higher-standing, but they do not pay attention to him either. Finally, with all his courage, Akaky goes to an important person to seek justice, but he does not pay attention to it. Gogol blames the public about the overturned scale of values. The system is immaculate to the little person. He is helpless and insignificant in front of it. Then Akaky Akakievich finally lost the meaning of his life. After the last few years he spent every spare minute in rewriting to buy a overcoat, and finally in the dark of nowhere somebody goes out and takes him in minutes and no one wants to help him, Akaky is crushed. He comes home and does not transcribe that day either, because he does not see any sense in that, he goes to bed and in a few days he is no longer alive. Nobody understands his death until, in a few days, the department sends a guard to surrender him immediately. The character does not receive this command, and the guard returns without Akaky . They ask why he tells them that they buried him three days ago. This makes clear the death of the little man. As he had lived unnoticed, he had gone unnoticed.

In the final of the Gogol story, he uses the fantastic feature. In the grotesque form, the absurd means the motive for revenge after the clerk's death. Though so late, Akaky manages to return his dignity and defend his rights to the important person and the system by frightening it. The sad irony of the narrator is that the conservative world redeems only in the afterlife. Gogol inspired many writers behind him with the overcoat novel. The little person Akaky over time is subject to ridicule and then worthy of respect, but is it worth your dignity after death? Does that mean there in the hereafter? The message raises the curtains in front of everyone so we can see the real world in which we live and the system that controls us. It suggests that we should not just be pawns of the important people in society. We must all have equal rights and unbalanced dignity.

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