![]() ![]() ![]() Gogol uses the name “Akaky Akakievich” as a meaningful symbol of the protagonist’s character. Simon Karlinsky, with reference to Gogol’s possible homosexuality, argues that the overcoat is also a stand-in for a female lover, drawing from the fact that the narrator literally compares Akaky’s bond with the overcoat to that with a wife or companion. He begins to feel “as if his very existence became somehow fuller, as if some other person were there with him, as if he were not alone but some pleasant life’s companion had agreed to walk down the path of life with him-and this companion was none other than that same overcoat” (406). The overcoat becomes for Akaky symbolic of a higher purpose in life and another way of living, to which he dedicates himself with obsessive fever. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |