(384 words) Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin - the main character of the story N.V. Gogol's "Overcoat". This character is an image of a "little man", which the author depicted with the help of typing.
Everything that surrounds Akakia, as if hinting at his difficult social and financial situation. The title of a titular adviser in the St. Petersburg department does not bring him much income, since he basically rewrites papers. This lesson is a great pleasure for Bashmachkin, he does not want to engage in a new type of activity (he refuses papers proposed by the director for editing).
The clothes of Akaky Akakievich, too, are all as if battered by life. Only the frost made him think that the old overcoat was no longer good at all and should buy a new one. But since Akaki does not have money to buy it, he begins to save on himself.
The writer illustrates this situation in order to show the reader that the main character sets as his "petty" goal the acquisition of a new thing. It is then, when a substitution of values takes place that a person gradually begins to lose the meaning of his existence, believing that he himself is less worthy of respect than objects of material well-being.
And so it happened. Akaki Akakievich begins to refuse candles and tea in the evenings; at home, "so as not to wear underwear," he wears a dressing gown on his naked body. However, these deprivations do not bother him. Bashmachkin is even happy that he managed to buy an overcoat, for the sake of which he had to make his diet more scarce, and forget about convenience for a while.
Many began to respect him, seeing in a new overcoat, some even invited him to visit. Gogol uses a contrast technique here to contrast the attitude of others to Akaki before buying an overcoat and after. Up to this point, many even mocked him, but now the titular adviser seemed to have become higher in their eyes.
Unfortunately, these happy moments did not last long. Soon after the holiday to which Bashmachkin was invited, misfortune happened (the overcoat was ripped off directly from his shoulders). Even the “significant person" Akaki could not get help.
An episode in which it becomes clear how “shallow" Bashmachkin’s goal was his death from a fever. This disease was caused by worries about the lost overcoat, which seemed to be the soul of the protagonist. Now, when she is not with him, Akaky Bashmachkin seems to have no need to live (which is why he is dying).
Since during his life Akaki did not have time to enjoy his dear thing and return it to himself, he becomes a ghost, tearing his greatcoats from people in the same way as they once did to him. Even the “significant person" finally came to its senses and began to more respectfully treat those who are lower than him in social status.
