{"id":6074,"date":"2015-11-10T20:53:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T01:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/?p=6074"},"modified":"2015-11-10T20:55:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T01:55:39","slug":"the-overcoat-or-really-the-dressing-gown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2015\/11\/10\/the-overcoat-or-really-the-dressing-gown\/","title":{"rendered":"The Overcoat (or really the Dressing-Gown)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gogol’s The Overcoat<\/em> has the same sticky, slimy, unpleasant-to-view feeling of George Orwell’s 1984<\/em>. Akaky Akakievich has a monotonous job that only he loves, one that he takes very seriously and even does in his free time. Winston Smith, Orwell’s protagonist, has a fairly boring occupation as well, doing almost the same thing: where Akaky simply copies the words, Winston\u00a0changes them to reflect Big Brother’s infallibility. Akaky and Winston both\u00a0live alone, eat the bland foods that their meager government salaries can afford them, and either willingly ignores or is encouraged to ignore\u00a0every attempt at meaningful human interaction. Where Akaky smells\u00a0alcohol and slops on the stairs going to Petrovich’s apartment, Winston is followed by the odor\u00a0of the Victory gin that everyone in his caste drink. Both stories have the theme of being born into\u00a0blindly following the leadership presented to the character.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gogol’s short story is much less harsh than Orwell’s and for a good reason. Gogol did not intend for\u00a0The Overcoat<\/em> to comment on the oppressiveness of the contemporaneous government. He merely wanted to mention or draw attention to the way of life of some of the government workers. Our protagonist was a titular councillor, rank nine, which means that he was a noble. He was a noble earning 400 rubles per year doing and loving service to the state almost every day. In the current ranking system Akaky could scarcely clothe himself with the salary he earned while people working in the same room as he threw lavish parties for everyone, eating and drinking at probably\u00a0a month’s worth of food for Akaky. There was a large gap between the rich and the poor even if they held similar or the same occupation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gogol’s The Overcoat has the same sticky, slimy, unpleasant-to-view feeling of George Orwell’s 1984. Akaky Akakievich has a monotonous job that only he loves, one that he takes very seriously and even does in his free time. Winston Smith, Orwell’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2793,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104482,51180],"tags":[110872,104663,1324,94251,1344,71092,110874,94252],"class_list":["post-6074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history253_earlyrussianhistory","category-miscellaneous","tag-110872","tag-alexander-i","tag-george-orwell","tag-gogol","tag-money","tag-nobles","tag-rank","tag-the-overcoat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2793"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}