"The Overcoat" #5

How in the world does this thing work? (A couple of small, local answers)

Thanks to Story Club members Max Levenson and Caitie Velasco for this image of a painting of Gogol, a painting they found on Etsy and purchased. More than any image I’ve seen, this makes me think that Gogol might, in person, have been a hoot.

The spine of “The Overcoat” is simple: A poor man, happily living a sad life, needs an overcoat; he scrimps and saves to get it; he gets it, briefly enjoys it; it is stolen; in attempting to get it back, he is scared to death by an official; his ghost gets revenge on the official. 

I’ve always found this a hard story to teach.  Gogol is such an original that it’s hard to find something that we mortals can use, in his work.  I often have found myself reduced to reading certain bits aloud, and basically, afterward, doing some version of, “Good, right?  Wow.” 

But here are two aspects of the story we might want to look at, if only as springboards for our discussion.

STANDING AT THE BORDER OF “EXPOSITION” and “RISING ACTION”

 The first three pages or so serve as a wide-shot of the larger bureaucratic milieu to which AA belongs.  Then, the paragraph at the top of page 4 (“Thus flowed on the peaceful life…”) tells us that, even given the smallness of his life, AA is happy – he is a man who “understood how to be content with his lot.”

Here – in that white space between paragraphs one and two on page 5 – we’re about to see as perfect a demonstration of the seam between “exposition” and “rising action” as we could ever hope for.