New School 4

Rajeet Guha New School Homework 4 ‘The Overcoat’ is a short story written in the third person by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Gogol is an immortal literary giant to have emerged from pre-revolutionary Russia. He wrote short stories, novels, novellas, plays and essays as well. ‘The Overcoat’ or ‘The Cloak’ is probably his most popular and influential short story. On the surface it is a story of an impoverished and insignificant copying clerk sans clout in the northern city of St. Petersburg in Tsarist Russia. The copying clerk is a simpleton bereft of intellectual abilities and critical thinking. His name is Akaky Akakevitch. Akaky is one of a multitude of clerical officers of the government of absolutist, imperialist, Tsarist Russia and is practically a cipher. He is a cog in the mechanized wheel of the Russian bureaucracy. He has no influence or importance in the pecking order of the bloated bureaucracy that thwarted and smothered reform in Russia. The Russian bureaucratic apparatus was an overarching structure and institution that was officious and overbearing. In this hierarchical bureaucratic structure where social mobility was highly implausible, Akaky was a tiny titular councilor. This story is an excoriating indictment and an outright satire on the inefficient, insular, dehumanized bureaucracy that was impervious to the needs of the common people. Akaky’s work is mindless, mechanical and repetitive. His work comprises copying documents verbatim and is as lacking in intellectual stimulation as chewing the cud. He nonetheless enjoys to the core his mundane and monotonous work, which brings him plenty of happiness and a sense of fulfillment. He worships his work and is uxoriously devoted to it. It is almost as if his tedious and toiling job of carefully copying papers and documents is an absolutely perfect substitute for a spouse or partner. He is engrossed in his job at the office as well at home. His job acts as both his work and leisure. He needs no entertainment of any kind. He wears a torn and tattered hoary overcoat that hardly provides respite from the frigid and wicked winter experienced at St. Petersburg. His threadbare overcoat is often the object of savage scorn and devastating derision in the office. His overcoat is the butt of crude humor. His colleagues are mercilessly scathing in their vitriolic criticism of his overcoat. Akaky too is oblivious of his surroundings and doesn’t notice the rubbish that is carelessly thrown on his overcoat every morning. His dilapidated overcoat is also a symbol of his pathetically low stature in society and his stagnation and wallowing in muddy waters in perpetuity. Akaky has no sartorial taste. He dresses shabbily and doesn’t comb his hair. His colleagues delight in disparaging him. Akaky is tongue-tied and is devoid of verbal jujitsu. His colleagues bully him and taunt him to no end. Even his first name Akaky means excreta and his last name Bashmatchkin means boots or in other words boots laced with excrement. It is as if his very name foreshadowed his terrible treatment and his dung heap of humiliation in a cruel society. Nevertheless, Akaky is silently strong and stoic in his demeanor and bears all these indignities with dignity and equanimity. It is only on rare occasions that he pleads with them to cease pestering and harassing him. This short story is also a satire on human nature. The story amply displays the pettiness, meanness, wickedness, depravity and even cruelty of human nature. The story also reaches out and beseeches humans to jettison their hectoring of other humans who are weak and helpless and also imbibe the values of compassion and empathy towards their fellow brothers and sisters. The naturalism and realism of the story is palpable in the dark, dreary and drab description of the squalid sections of St. Petersburg, the frightening, fierce and ferocious winter of Russia, the precise portrayal of uninteresting life of the petty bureaucrats, the venality and indifference of bureaucrats and policemen alike, the helplessness of the minnows of society, the contemptuous treatment of underlings and the condescension of the superiors. Later on, the new overcoat’s overnight elevation of Akaky’s social status is also hinting at the power and the potential of material goods to transform a person’s rank and dignity in society. At the same time, Gogol has also mocked society’s fetish and infatuation with goods and commodities. Towards the end of the story, Gogol also incorporates the elements of fantasy and supernaturalism in his story as there is a specter tormenting the denizens of St. Petersburg by snatching their overcoats and subjecting them to the terrors of the winter. This specter is it seems none but Akaky. There is also another unknown phantom who has been harrying and browbeating others. Here Gogol uses the symbol of vindictive and vengeful ghosts to signal that the underdogs of society can also rise in rebellion if pushed beyond a breaking point. Gogol is cautioning the powerful and the haves of the imminent unrest that may be inevitable if the lumpen masses, have nots, the poerless, the voiceless and subalterns are exploited beyond impunity. ‘Guests of the Nation’ is a powerful, poignant short story by the celebrated Irish short story writer scilicet Frank O’Connor. It is a touching story that arouses pathos in the reader for both the perpetrators and the victims alike. This story by Frank O’ Connor is a piece de resistance in O’Connor’s oeuvre. The story is set against the backdrop of the bloodbath and the butchery of the Irish War of Independence. This took place just after the conclusion of the Great War. Catholic Ireland was trying to break free from the fetters of English or British Imperialism. Ireland had been subjugated by England. Ireland’s politics, economy and society had been made subservient to that of England. The Irish Republican Army fought a ferocious war against the English. Frank O’Connor enlisted in the Irish Republican Army as a young man and fought against the English, the contemporary colonizer of Ireland. The plot is simple and straightforward like that of any war. Belcher and Hawkins are English soldiers who have been captured by the Irish Republican Army and are being held as prisoners or as guests of the nation of Ireland. It is later learnt that these English soldiers are prisoners of war or hostages being held. The English have also captured four Irish soldiers. In an old and choleric Irishwoman’s quarters, three Irish soldiers namely Bonaparte, Noble and Donovan have imprisoned the two English soldiers that is Belcher and Hawkins. Belcher is stoic, staid, phlegmatic and taciturn. He is also kind and bends over backwards to help people. He voluntarily extends his helping hand to the Irishwoman and shares household chores with her. He endears himself to her and also to the Irish soldiers by his pleasant and mild comportment. He plays cards and chats casually with the Irish soldiers to pass away the time at night. The other English soldier Hawkins is an atheist and an anarchist who is a dogged detractor of rapacious and predatory untrammeled capitalism. He scorns organized religion and belittles believers. He is knowledgeable and a gifted debater and a loquacious and irrepressible person. He is also lively and jovial and engages in banter back and forth with the Irish soldiers. Bonaparte and Noble are two Irish soldiers who have become very friendly and closely attached to the English soldiers and in fact don’t even consider them to be prisoners. Bonaparte and Noble’s superior Jeremiah Donovan plays cards with the English hostages but is aloof from them and keeps his distance from them. Donovan knows what purposes the English hostages serve and tries to be detached from them. This is the exposition of the story. A petty Irish intelligence officer soon apprises Donovan that the four Irish soldiers have been liquidated by the English and in reprisal the Irish soldiers must do the same to their English counterparts. This is the development of the story. Donovan is a cut and dried soldier who dispassionately and in a matter of fact wants to do his job, kill the English hostages and satisfy his superior. The two English hostages are taken out of the woman’s quarters and shot dead by a cynical and cruel Donovan. This is the dramatic element of the story. This is when the story reaches its climax. Donovan doesn’t bat an eyelid in wiping out the two soldiers while a shell-shocked, doleful and devastated Noble digs the graves for the two English soldiers. A crushed, tormented and torn Bonaparte finishes off Hawkins’ misery. Afterwards, the old woman and Noble are depicted uttering prayers for the souls of the dead English soldiers. Bonaparte’s world has been turned brutally upside down. The bottom has fallen out of his inner universe. The ground has sunk beneath his feet and he feels spiritually, emotionally and psychologically bankrupt. He has sunk into an abyss of depression after participating in the killing of his friends, the English soldiers who were chatting with him a few hours earlier. This is the anti-climax. The naturalism and raw realism of the story is glaringly noticeable. The friendship and camaraderie struck up among the soldiers of the warring nations is realistic as is the playing of games and argumentation by the fireplace. The temporary lodging of the soldiers in the curmudgeonly woman’s quarters is as real. Finally, the stark reality of retribution and the cold-blooded killing of the English hostages are as real as it gets in the madness of war. From guests of the nation the English soldiers are instantaneously metamorphosed into ghosts of the nation. Bonaparte’s name has significance, as when he relieves Hawkins out of his misery he has become a killer like the French despot Napoleon Bonaparte. Frank O’Connor has achieved a process of catharsis by writing this story as he has brought out the feelings of fear and pity, which he experienced as an IRA soldier during the Irish War of Independence. Others on both sides of the conflict also experienced these feelings. The story is a satire on war; on the madness, irrationality, amorality, butchery and inhumanity of war. The story reveals how war brings out the worst in human nature. Notwithstanding such unalloyed negativity in war, there are also a few humane moments in war as when in the last scene the old woman and the soldier Noble utter prayers for the departed English soldiers. There are also oceans of remorse and sorrow experienced by soldiers in war for their wrongs of commission as when Bonaparte feels that his life is now worthless after having killed his friends. The themes explored in this story are firstly duty as contrasted to humanity, secondly the conflict between ethics and morals, compassion versus cruelty, communicative rationality as opposed to instrumental rationality, the relationship between puppet masters and puppets and finally naiveté against maturity. The dilemma between a soldier’s duty and his innate humanity is driven home by the pathetic and tortured mind of Bonaparte. Bonaparte’s mind is also a place where his duty to kill the hostages or professional ethics is pitted against his personal morals or humanity which behooves him to humanely treat the hostages. Bonaparte’s soldierly or military cruelty or instrumental rationality is pitted against his civilian compassion or communicative rationality. The earlier part of the story exposes Bonaparte’s naiveté, as he doesn’t think of the English soldiers as hostages while later on he acts like a matured soldier and shoots Hawkins. The story finally shows puppet masters at two levels; at a crude level the Irish soldiers are puppet masters while the English hostages are puppets but at a more refined and sophisticated level the real puppet masters are the politicians and the top military brass on both sides while ordinary soldiers on both sides are the puppets. Frank O’ Connor elucidates what a short story exactly in his seminal piece of literary criticism titled ‘The Lonely Voice’. This piece of literary criticism by him is a tour de force. Not only does the illustrious Frank O’ Connor enlighten us about the content, theme and purpose of a short story but he also highlights its similarities to a novel and distinguishes in a discerning manner the separate strands of plots, themes and objectives that verily run through the two branches of fiction writing namely short stories and novels. He says that storytelling was initially a public art akin to poetry and drama meant for the ears of the untrained public and the indiscriminate masses. Nonetheless, with the efflux of time, storytelling has become a much more polished and subtle art meant for the individual, intelligent, noetic and critical reader who understands the nuances of the story and gets the gist of it. From its initial phase where stories had a loose structure and technique they have gradually evolved into an elevated art form that embodies a scientific structure and a thorough technique. Novels like stories have gone through similar stages of progression and evolution in history. Novels and stories both depict the human condition and the attitudes of humans to life. Short stories and novels alike have naturalism and realism pervading through its bodies. The term Frank O’ Connor uses to describe naturalism and realism is verisimilitude or the strong semblance of the truth or reality. Later in the essay talks about the different defining and distinguishes features that are used to differentiate short stories from novels. Gogol’s story ‘The Overcoat’ and the author’s very own celebrated classic ‘Guests of the Nation’ exemplify short stories at its finest performance. Both these sad stories paint a plaintive portrait of the subalterns, the have-nots, the subjugated, the poor, the oppressed, the helpless, the powerless and the voiceless that are mere marionettes. This is what Frank O’ Connor means by the subsumed population or the lonely voices. The subsumed population or the lonely voice refers to the underclass or exploited people whose voices are not heard in society. Society is shaped by the mainstream population that has scant regard for the people lying on the fringes or outliers of society. Short stories articulate the miseries that plague these lonely voices. Stories act as a voice for the marginalized or the voiceless sections of society and bring their problems to the forefront. The general reader usually cannot relate to the perennial and insoluble problems of the powerless characters that populate stories unlike novels that encapsulate problems that the educated reader can relate to. Novels stir emotions that resonate with readers while in short stories emotions often don’t strike a familiar chord with the readers. Finally, short stories implore and beseech its readers to have compassion and empathy for their fellow underprivileged brothers and sisters. Frank O’ Connor like Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and many others feels that short story writers will forever be indebted to Gogol and trace their ancestry to Gogol’s short story ‘The Overcoat’. Frank O’ Connor also says that short stories do not lionize people as heroes but often compare crucified characters to prominent people who face persecution and torture. Contrary to the conspicuous absence of a hero in a short story, the novel always has a glorified hero or other heroes who play second fiddle to the primary hero. He generalizes and says that England is the birthplace of the novel and no country has produced as many prolific and prodigious novelists as England. He also insinuates that imperializing and colonizing countries have produced fecund novels that often display the sensibilities and sensitivities of the upper or middle class. On the other hand, the submerged or lonely voices that is the quintessence of short stories he has hinted has come mostly from the colonized countries that were under the thumbs of their colonial masters. He says that the best short story writers abound in America, Ireland, India, and West Indies and also probably from the autochthons. However, he contradicts himself by also saying that Tsarist Russia has churned out some of the greatest short story writers. The novel according to him is shaped by elitist conceptions of society and the conforming community with bourgeois morality while the short story is exotic, individualistic, free, nonconforming, rebellious and bohemian. The short story has little respect for authority and often undermines authority flagrantly. At a fundamental or rudimentary level, the short story is demarcated from the novel by the issue of length. A short story is ipso facto short while a novel is long and elaborate. The vast expanse of time, the full-bodied development of character and the piling of incidents is a key to a good novel. The short story on the other hand focuses on a limited period of time where events take place and gives the reader a snapshot. A short story tersely conveys the theme, conflict and the message if there is any without beating around the bush. In fact, beating around the bush is an unavoidable feature of a bloated novel. Frank O’ Connor believes that the short story writer is a superior artist, creator, dramatist and writer to the novelist.