Where It All Goes Down
It's Hard out There for a Bureaucrat
Nikolai Gogol grew up in hard times for Russia. When he was 17 years old in 1825, a group of revolutionaries called the Decembrists (no, not the band) tried to overthrow the czarist regime. Of course they were crushed, but the whole affair shook up the Russian populace. It also made the next czar, Nicholas I, very strict. As a result he changed up the whole Russian bureaucracy.
Before we tell you how he changed it, you should know that it was already pretty complicated. The bureaucracy was divided into three types of service: civil, military, and court. Then those three types of service had 14 grades of officers, each with their own style of address. Peter the Great conceived this whole thing in 1722, because what's a great government without a complicated and circuitous bureaucracy?
To put that into context, rank one was the highest position you could get. The prominent personage was probably rank six, seven, or eight. And Akaky? He's just a lowly titular councilor. His rank didn't even have a number.
Following the Decembrist's failed coup, Czar Nicholas I gave the Russian bureaucracy a pretty big makeover. He took the aristocracy out of the bureaucracy, causing all sorts of shifts in the ranks, so by the time that Gogol applied for a job as a bureaucrat in 1828, the whole bureaucracy was in a state of unrest. With all this awkward reorganization, the Russian government didn't sound like a very fun place to work during this time, and we can see why Gogol paints such a poor picture of Russian government officials in "The Overcoat."
Winter in St. Petersburg, Russia
Ah, St. Petersburg, the city established by Czar Peter the Great in an attempt to make 18th-century Russia more like Amsterdam. (Seriously.) As the imperial capital of Russia, the city was teeming with officials just like Akaky, but that's not what Gogol tells us is important to the story. Instead, it's the weather. The narrator says:
At the hour when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councilors are sometimes unprotected. Their only salvation lies in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little overcoats, five or six streets, and then warming their feet well in the porter's room, and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official service, which had become frozen on the way. (17)
In other words, it's freezing!
The average temperature of St. Petersburg in the winter is 12°F. In 1883 it even hit a record low of -25.6°F. No wonder Akaky got so sick when he went home without his coat. At those temperatures he could literally freeze to death in the streets. In some other countries it might be silly to write a whole story about a coat, but it's obvious that in St. Petersburg owning a good overcoat is a big deal.
We're not in Nevsky Prospect Anymore, Toto
You'd think a story set in the capital of Russia would be full of the glitz and glamor of city life, but Gogol is no F. Scott Fitzgerald. Remember, Akaky is a poor low-ranking official, and even though he lives in the city, he can't take advantage of all the culture and shopping it has to offer him.
Gogol made this clear to readers by contrasting the neighborhood Akaky lives in with the neighborhood of the official who throws the party. The narrator says:
Akaky Akakievich was first obliged to traverse a sort of wilderness of deserted, dimly lighted streets; but in proportion as he approached the official's quarter of the city, the streets became more lively, more populous, and more brilliantly illuminated. (71)
It's almost like he's entering a different world, but it's just the nice part of town. We can tell Akaky probably didn't get out of the house much.
Akaky's story points out that even in a regal city like St. Petersburg, there are poor people who have very little. It's likely that if Akaky didn't live in such an impoverished part of town, he never would have had his coat stolen in the first place. The juxtaposition is even more biting because just down the street, people are spending money and having a good time without a single thought for the little people like him.