The Overcoat – Nikolai Vasilievich GogolThe hero of “The Overcoat”, Akaky Akakievich, generates both hatred and pity in the reader. His meekness and pathetic life deserve sympathy, while his total detachment from his peers and his singular obsession with his coat are often scorned. He is drastically different from all his peers, but there is a certain purity to his way of life that the overcoat taints. Akaky's world is completely devoid of excitement; his only source of pleasure lies in his work. However, his own career is terribly banal and only such a simple man as him could derive happiness from it. Akaky is a ghost in his world and only his death leaves any impression. Temptation, in the form of a luxurious coat, is forced upon him and disrupts his peaceful life. Akaky should not be hated for his disconnection from reality or his symbolic marriage to an overcoat; rather he should be pitied for his terrible fate. Akaky is doomed from birth. When his mother flips through the Russian Orthodox calendar to look for her son's names, each name carries the connotation of martyrdom. She realizes that she will not be able to avoid an equally miserable fate, and so resignedly gives him the monotonous name of "Akaky, son of Akaky". Nothing about him, in fact, is noteworthy or attractive. Described as short, pockmarked, bald and ruddy-faced, Akaky is the antithesis of attractive. A fly attracts more attention than him. His minimum wage prevents him from affording anything but the poorest clothes, but the finest garments could hardly improve his appearance. Even the time when he goes to work is cursed; finds itself constantly the target of rubbish thrown from apartment windows and so always...... middle of paper...... of a general can hide the face of "...certain important person..." (p. 415) the whose cruelty weakens and ultimately kills Akaky. Fate is represented by the “…frost of the north…” (p. 399) which, combined with the temptation offered by Petrovich and the general's brutality, dooms Akaky. His mother was right that his fate was inevitable. Since Akaky is completely unaware of the pact he made with the devil, he cannot be held responsible when the seemingly wonderful overcoat consumes his soul. Akaky cannot be despised for his obsession with an object because his pathetic life has made his fixation inevitable. The overcoat gave him his first feeling of pride, importance and acceptance, and so he couldn't help but become attached to it. He was happy before the garment entered his life, but Petrovich and the cold climate of St. Petersburg force him to.