The Overcoat

Nikolai Gogol · 1842 CE · Short Story · Russian · Victorian

A copying clerk in Petersburg, the joke of his office, finds his coat beyond mending and starves himself to afford a replacement. The new coat briefly changes how the whole city treats him. Russian fiction spent the next century climbing out from under it.

Open The Overcoat in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

• parallels ↑ The Nose
  Nikolai Gogol · 1836 CE · Short Story
• companion to ↑ Diary of a Madman
  Nikolai Gogol · 1835 CE · Short Story
• companion to ↑ Nevsky Prospect
  Nikolai Gogol · 1835 CE · Short Story
• ↓ Poor Folk
  Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1846 CE · Novel — responds to this
• ↓ The Double
  Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1846 CE · Novel — influenced by this

Attributes

Closest analogues

• Nevsky Prospect
  Nikolai Gogol · 1835 CE · Short Story

  58% · 11 shared
  Short StorySatirePsychologicalIsolation & AlienationEverymanIronic ReversalThe Cityvs SocietyIronicGothicRussian
• Diary of a Madman
  Nikolai Gogol · 1835 CE · Short Story

  58% · 10 shared
  Short StorySatirePsychologicalClass & InequalityIsolation & AlienationEverymanThe Cityvs SocietyIronicRussian
• The Tales of Belkin
  Alexander Pushkin · 1831 CE · Short Story

  58% · 10 shared
  Short StorySatireClass & InequalityJustice & RevengeEverymanIronic ReversalThe Garmentvs SocietyIronicRussian
• Poor Folk
  Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1846 CE · Novel

  56% · 9 shared
  PsychologicalClass & InequalityIsolation & AlienationVictorianEverymanThe GarmentThe Cityvs SocietyRussian
• The Eternal Husband
  Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1870 CE · Novel

  56% · 9 shared
  PsychologicalIsolation & AlienationJustice & RevengeVictorianEverymanIronic ReversalThe CityIronicRussian
• The Beatification of Area Boy
  Wole Soyinka · 1995 CE · Play

  54% · 8 shared
  SatireClass & InequalityJustice & RevengeEverymanIronic ReversalThe Cityvs SocietyIronic