The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol - Book Report/Review Example

The narrator of the story has a distant tone, which sets the mood of the short story. This tone of disregard or lack of empathy for the protagonist of the story helps the narrator to trivialize the story of Akaky's life. Everything is trivial about Akaky's life - this is his tragedy. The comic narration of the story makes the life of a man, trapped in bureaucratic Russia, stripped of any individuality of his own upbringing or history is terrifying. He is like every other man who lives in the shadow, like ghosts - he has his father's name, he duplicates or copies, "he was always to be seen in the same place, [with] the same attitude, the same occupation - - always the letter-copying clerk" (Gogol 2) The narrator successfully draws out the tragedy of a common man through obsessive, trivializing, and sarcastic comic description of his life. Akaky's worn out old cloak is the objective correlative of his identity, his belief - his being. It is dull, cold, and easily permeable by the North wind (symbolizing change) - it is weak and lacks assertion. His life, his everyday life under that coat is drab and each day is same as the day before or the next day to come. The narrator ruthlessly describes him as "a horse to a mill", who could not stand up to anything challenging. The narrator describes a certain time in his life when certain officer desirous of rewarding him and paying "attention" to him asked him to do a little more than copying, i.e. change heading and some words in an already concluded report! Akaky failed the test and the author writes, "After that they let him copy on forever" (Gogol 4). Thus, the narrator describes him as a man who "indulged in no kind of diversion" and he was "content with his lot" (Gogol 5). He had a vegetative existence and trivialized him further by saying, "Having written to his hearts content, he lay down to sleep, smiling at the thoughtof what God might send him to copy on the morrow." (Gogol 5) The narrator, like the teasing officer's in Akaky's office, has a tone of "pity" towards Akaky, and he narrates the one incident that happened in Akaky's life that changed or rather disrupted the tragedy of his humdrum life forever! The narrator further mocks his hero by saying that when the need for a new overcoat rose, "at the word "new" all grew dark before [his] eyes" (Gogol 9). But, when it became a necessity, Akaky compromised and saved more to cater to a "new" cloak - his new identity. The narrator almost sympathizes with the hero when he says that, "to tell the truth, it was a little hard for him at first to accustom himself to these deprivations." Here, the narrator's comic tone stings as the reader understands that actually Akaky is a poor man in Russia, who cannot afford to have an identity. He has to remain amorphous and the little choice he is granted becomes a life-changing experience for him. Hence, the comic exaggeration is necessary to hold such a trivial incident under spotlight, without which Akaky's whole life would go to a waste and it would not even rise up to a tragedy! Akaky's new cloak becomes the only one reason in his life to add to the firmness of his character, it makes him lively and ultimately he sets "himself a goal" (Gogol 13). The narrator comically describes his discussion with Petrovich as a "conference" that he indulged in every month, and after a hard labor and forced savings from his meagre livelihood Akaky affords a new cloak and a new identity of a man, who makes a choice for himself. This trivial addition to his life imparts a new mood and an "internal satisfaction" (Gogol 15). Akaky even drinks and rejoices the attention that his new cloak helps him to get. The cloak consumes whatever identity he had and takes on a new persona - the loss of which leaves him bereft of his old identity and makes him a ghost. His burial, like his birth, was done out of "necessity" and a pine coffin was ordered - only because its cheap (Gogol 24). Thus the narrator describes with tragic humor that Akaky died uttering the most violent curses (Gogol 25), which signifies his ultimate disillusionment with the society and with himself. The narrator describes the loss of Akaky similarly - with detachment - "and St. Petersburg was left without Akaky Akakiyevich, as though he never lived there" (Gogol 25). The narrator matter-of-factly sums up Akaky's life to again heighten how dispensable he is. The "commotion" that Akaky raises after his death and the desire for a "fantastic ending" can only be termed as the poetic justice that the narrator introduces in the story that further adds symbolic sustenance to the tragicomedy. The futile attempt of the state to imprison or arrest the ghost, and the ghost sneezing in the eyes of the three policemen is a ridicule targeted at the bureaucracy, and the narrator takes the liberty to ridicule the state with the help of Akaky's ghost! The death of Akaky has not exempt the state of its guilt and everyday the sightings narrated by the author only heightens the reader's suspicion that the defunct state is haunted by its corrupt history. The ghost even changes shape at the end when it grows in size and appearance - one cannot but feel the fury and rage that the sight of this apparition invokes, which is "too tall, [and wearing] huge moustaches" (Gogol 29). The dominating force of a state can be best described through the trivializing dangers of comedy, aptly used to attack and unfortunately describe the two-dimensional reduced lives of its people, who are tragically best dramatized as ghosts and who cannot justify their human selves. Nor can they provide excitement to a reader with a grand story. The narrator helps Akaky look for his cloak even after his death - through brilliant storytelling. Read More