Sunday, March 10, 2013

Kids, Wear Your Coats


            The protagonist in “The Overcoat,” by Nikolai Gogol, exemplifies a model Russian citizen. During the time when the short story was written, early nineteenth century, the social system in Russia was extraordinarily hierarchal. The strict hierarchy leads to competitiveness amongst the citizens. Our story’s protagonist, Akaky Akakievich, is the ideal citizen because he is devoid of any ambition and is heedless of how he appears in public. Additionally, he is unoriginally unoriginal.
            Akaky’s name is a copy of his father’s and translates to something resembling “crap son of crap on a boot.” Before making any decisions, he has already been set on a very difficult course in life. A course destined for stagnation, and at best, failure.
            Akaky managed to find a career that fits his criteria. His criteria being; requiring no original thinking, linear, planned-out, and simple. A copier. He sits at a desk and copies papers for the duration of his life. After he finishes at work he moves to his shabby apartment where he lives alone and proceeds to copy even more papers for pure pleasure.
            Eventually, Akaky encounters a taste of ambition. At first he is hesitant, but once he sets a new goal for himself he pursues it with zeal. That particular goal is scraping together enough rubles to pay for a new overcoat. As before mentioned, he is initially put-off at the prospect of change (as Akaky fears change) but then he wholeheartedly embraces it. He turns the goal to fund a new overcoat into his singular ambition in life.
            In the type of society Akaky lives in, it is considered normal to covet your superior’s position, while expressing the utmost condescension to those ranked beneath you. Akaky throws this idea upside down by exhibiting a distinctly socialist/communist attitude. He is a worker ant. Akaky is unoriginal, bland, simple, but the kind of man who makes the world go round. 

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