Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol's The Overcoat is a humanitarian and mystical short story about the dreary life of a low class man. Akaky Akakievich is a forlorn copying clerk in a stuffy government office. He is wholly devoted to his routine and monotonous copying, so much so that the continuous mocking and ridicule in the office do not keep him away from his work. Akaky orders a new overcoat after saving and making other privations. He lavishes attention on it, selects the color and the fabric out of love and longing, and waits desperately for its completion, only to have it stolen off his back the first day he wears it. This literal level of the story is full of images and symbols which have a latent meaning that Gogol is trying to communicate. In The Overcoat he contrasts meekness and humility of the normal man with rudeness of the so called "important personage". He gives a satirical narration of the Russian bureaucracy, and criticizes and protests against the categorization of each person by rank and the behaviors set for each rank. .
Akaky himself is really an excuse for the writer to describe in some detail the bureaucracy itself, which means that the background and setting are not implied but may be as important to the significance of the story as Akaky is himself. He is the little man crushed by the economic and political injustice. The focus of this story, apart from Akaky, is his new overcoat. The overcoats in this story signify rank. The rich have marten and silks on their coats to show their rank while the poor make do with other materials. Akaky's old coat is referred to as the dressing gown by the other clerks who make fun of him. He is looked down upon, ignored and mistreated. But when he gets his new coat the same staff congratulates him and accepts him. They act as if he has been promoted and the new overcoat signifies this rise in stature. New doors open up for him and he is invited to a party.
