Breakthrough Writer

Gogol's "The Overcoat" Short Story Link

Here is Gogol's "The Overcoat."

Gogol's Overcoat Lessons on One Post

Lesson One: The Contradictory Meanings

Lesson Two: We All Wear an Overcoat

Lesson Three: Dreams of Grandiosity

Lesson Four: Mythical Narratives

“The Overcoat” Lesson #4: A Chimera Is Something That Is Blown Out of Proportion

Having a Sense of Proportion . . . Or Not

One of the salient features of a chimera is that it is something that we have blown out of proportion. A woman goes to Walmart on Black Friday and uses pepper spray on the other shoppers. Cubs fans almost killed a guy who caught a foul ball. Akaky obsesses over a coat as if he were searching for the Holy Grail.

All these instances show people blowing things out of proportion. The psychological causes behind this phenomenon are several which include the following:

One. Mob mentality. We succumb to the mob and unleash our irrational beast, wanting to kill a fan for catching a baseball that may have been the final out of an inning. 

Two. Too much alone time. When we're alone, we tend to think too much. More thinking isn't necessarily better thinking. It can simply be more bad thinking.

And when we're alone, our thoughts aren't challenged by others so that often our solitary thoughts become distorted, exaggerated, and paranoid. 

Three. Loneliness compels us to obsess over something, a chimera, to compensate for our sense of disconnection. The obsession is an attempt to connect with something and overcome the fear and dread of loneliness. 

Four. Faulty memory causes us to inflate the importance of something. We call this exaggerated, romanticized memory nostalgia. Nostalgia is often a chimera. 

Five. Impoverishment Through Substitution. When we lack basic human needs--belonging, distinction, flourishing, love, meaningful work--we substitute with inferior things, that is chimeras, meant to fill the void. 

Six. Not living in the present causes us to live in a distorted future and/or past. These distortions can become chimeras.

Seven. We often chase self-destructive chimeras because we crave extreme drama to fill the emptiness in our lives. As such, cravings for extreme drama compel us to blow things out of proportion.

Eight. When we're desperate for approval and validation of others, we tend to look for some mighty token of our greatness and we misplace this need in some chimera or other. 

Nine. Self-pity by its very nature is exaggerated and blown out of proportion because it is a narcissistic impulse and thus results in overblown self-regard.

Ten. Projection. The unconscious projection of our inner selves on outward things makes us see things as being greater than they really are. 

The Ghost Story in "The Overcoat" Gets Blown Out of Proportion

One. The ghost story becomes a myth, a narrative that grows over time and expresses meaning, fears, wishes, collective values of the people, similar to the way biblical narratives are developed and explained by some authors you read. As a story grows and grows within a community, it evolves and takes on a life of its own. This life explains people’s deepest longings and their sense of the way life is. As such, these stories become myths and in an ironic way they become a deeper part of our reality that stories that are literally true. Mark Twain said that rumors and  lies spread faster than truth.

Two. A ghost is a metaphor for a haunted, guilty conscience, the hunger for revenge, and the hunger for justice.

Three. People with nice coats become the victims of thievery and mugging and they come up with the ghost explanation but the deeper truth is that nice things act like a drug on society, create a certain mania and the owners of coveted things become targets. I’m reminded of the ring and Mordor.

Four. We see that the VIP in the aftermath of AA’s death is overcome with remorse. He is a doubt-ridden sensitive man who played his power cards all wrong and now he must pay the price. I’m reminded of Randy Moss who yelled at a catering service before the Vikings released him. In his state of remorse, he sees a paramour and commits adultery. Having a paramour, an illicit lover is “in style,” according to the VIP; hence he is a man committed to image over substance; being an adulterer is part of his overcoat, his mask.

Five. We see that VIP’s rank was a mask, like an overcoat, that prevented him from revealing his true self.  

Six. The narrator makes a mockery of the VIP’s braggadocio in the face of his seeing the ghost of AA who looks like a homunculus. The VIP is so haunted that he returns home chastened and without his overcoat, a metaphor for being stripped of his facades, stripped to his bare existence, as Viktor Frankl would say, and he becomes averse to using games of power over people. He is more thoughtful and less rash.

Student Example of A-Level Introduction, Transition, and Thesis

I married Janet even though I didn't love her. I loved Janet's sister Abbey. I figured marrying Janet was the next best thing.

I had been in love with Abbey since the fifth grade and knew, even then, that winning her affections was a complete impossibility. When I tried to hold her books during walks to school, she screamed for the police. When I sat next to her in the cafeteria, she cried until one of the cafeteria monitors issued me a detention slip. When I asked her to the high school Senior Ball,  her boyfriend jumped out of nowhere and slugged me on the side of the head. Minutes later, I woke up in a daze and, perhaps acting under the influence of a damaged brain, I was convinced that the only thing I could do was to marry Janet, Abbey’s plain-looking sister. To call her “plain-looking” is a bit generous and in fact sometimes in the depths of my heart I referred to her as “The Ugly Sister,” even after we had started dating and had become, officially, boyfriend and girlfriend.

My ulterior motives in becoming Janet’s “steady” were clear: Janet had a room next the Beautiful Sister, Abbey, and this gave me close access to my true love, a condition that both gave me great excitement and seething dyspepsia.

In order to maintain my cover, I exercised the utmost decency and kindness to Janet who, grateful for my attentions, continued to see me through high school and college until marriage became inevitable. Of course, I had misgivings after the marriage and was so overcome by “the tragedy of it all” that I spent our Hawaiian honeymoon in a deep depression, cooped up in the hotel bathroom reading self-help books.

Over time, the depression became less extreme as I convinced myself that I was in fact in love with Janet and even though I knew that to be a lie, I also knew that by telling a lie over and over, the truth could get buried underground and, while not disappearing completely, it could be subjugated into a slight unpleasant background noise, like elevator Muzak.

After Janet and I got married and settled in our new home, Abbey was both grateful that someone married her sister (for Janet was known amongst her family as “the less pretty one”) and also relieved that I was, now presumably in love with Janet, no threat to her so that Abbey began to open up to me as a “friend.” Naturally, Abbey’s familiar, intimate manner with me inflamed my passions so that I would often come home from family events and cry miserably. When my wife questioned my tears, I explained they were tears of gratitude, for I never believed I would find, in my wife, a love so perfect.

I feared that my life would go on in this manner indefinitely, pitying myself and lying to my wife. However, as years passed, I began to realize that Abbey,  divorced twice and always in and out of volatile relationships, had a rather fussy and what some might say “hellish” personality and I saw that I was fortunate to have been spared her imperious ways.

Lacking any real passion for my own wife, I was pleased to find that our arrangement was absent of strife and acrimony but that unfortunately I had more energy to focus on the flaming desires I felt for her sister. At the same time, I was now wise enough, or so I believed, to know that those desires would never be fulfilled. I was therefore resigned to enduring this constant tension of living in relative nuptial harmony, absent the passion, for the one sister, while living in torment, because of the unquenched desire, for the other. But on balance I saw that this arrangement was the best of all possibilities and I accepted my fate with grace and equanimity.

In contrast, Abbey, divorced yet again and observing the stable domestic life Janet and I had created, divulged to me one day that I was a “great catch” after all and she despised herself for having been so blind as to repel my solicitations so that her adult years were now full of undying anguish as she longed for me while she saw her sister live in relative happiness and contentment.

I wish I could say here that I rejected Abbey’s affections and her appeals to “get to know me better,” but sadly I found that when confronted with my lifelong burning chimera that I could not repel her and that, consequently, a dalliance ensued. I must also report that Abbey’s and my behavior became less and less prudent and that, inevitably, Janet discovered us in an compromising position and that this discovery resulted in our divorce. To reconcile with her sister, Abbey virulently rejected me, and accused me of being the “instigator” when in fact this was not so. Therefore, in the aftermath of my divorce, I was not in a position to marry the sister I had wanted all along but in fact was doomed to be despised by her because by her despising me Abbey could sublimate her guilt for having betrayed her sister and she could appease Janet who saw Abbey’s hatred of me as proof of her sister’s loyalty.

I suppose the divorce afforded me some relief, largely from the fact that my marriage had been a complete sham and that I was an impostor, unworthy of making the one sister long for me and unworthy of making the other happy. And yet there was a certain point in that fraudulent marriage in which I had done both, and in spite of my shame for being the fraud that I was, I also gloated with a surge of pride for having “pulled it off.”

Of course, now the gloating was over. Now my life was a long, tedious moral hangover, an intractable perdition for which I saw no escape even as my therapist implored me to “let go” of my guilt and to “let go” of a past for which I could not change.  

 

Student "A" Paper Analysis of Akaky's Reaction to the Loss of His Overcoat

Michelle Borden

Jeff McMahon

English 1A

May 23, 2012

 

 

Cat Panic and Out

 

Many people have died or become ill as the result of a broken heart, a job loss, or a nasty divorce. I just got over a bad inner ear infection after we moved to a new house. Last time my in-laws visited, I broke out into a rash all over my chest. Scientifically, when we experience stress, our bodies go into cat-in-water mode.  When in-laws visit, our adrenal glands begin to produce epinephrine (adrenalin), norepinephrine and cortisol to give us the extra energy we need to fight off a constant stream of passive-aggressive remarks like a cat when you try to put it in water. Afterwards, our bodies want to recover and to sit back, lick our fur, and stare hatefully at our oppressors. If there is no time to recover, if the stress continues, the brain simply stays in cat-in-water mode and leaves the rest of the body with no real defense against disease. This is the crux of how "stress kills" from a scientific standpoint. I think it goes deeper than that.  What if our bodies are just doing us a favor?  Who truly wants to exist in a stressful, meaningless world? We might say we would rather be alive and stressed than dead and relaxed (fully), but perhaps we don't know any better.  When there is "no way out," our bodies might find their own way, sans suicide, to escape extreme duress. Akakiy Akakiavitch lived an undemanding, low-stress existence before he was presented with the problem of the overcoat. A tormented person would not allow food scraps to land upon them without flinching and remarking on the terrible life they have to endure. A stressed-out person would act like a cat in water. Every crappy groundhoggishday was the same for Akakiy, and that was how he planned on continuing with his life. I find nothing really wrong with that.  Outside of the time that he was asked to perform a task outside of copy, he lived in a tao-like state... action through non-action.  His stress levels only began to elevate the closer he came to getting the overcoat.  The overcoat awakened his mind in a way that allowed life, the one that you feel, to come in.

When a simple man's life is turned upside down, it is tremendously more stressful for him to overcome as opposed to a complex individual's reaction to change. The simple man sees change as unneccessary and insurmountable. If he does gain the courage to actually make changes, he has now swam out into hostile waters and is subjected to new complications that change can evoke. Akikay Akakiavitch was ill prepared for anything other than an uncomplicated life.  If the tailor had just patched up his worn-out coat, he would have continued to play in complacency with the cards he had been dealt.  But the tailor and the weather forced change upon his life and he dealt with it by cutting out things that most of us would consider necessity. When we cut something out in our lives, we feel it, but Akikay didn't feel it like we do.  He was still living life free from cat panic.  The overcoat came, showering him with unfamiliar attention and circumstances that he had to cope with on another level.  Even though Akikay seemed to like the attention, he had never received it before in his life and wasn't really sure it was the kind of life he wanted to live.  The evening's party didn't bring him joy; just a few smiles here and there.  He didn't relish the excessive food after starving himself for months to afford the overcoat.  He didn't let loose because Akakiy Akakiavitch isn't the type to do such a thing. It's not in his nature. Akakiy was programmed to feel insignificant.  On his way home, he realizes how far from "home" he truly feels right before his overcoat is taken from him.  Had Akakiy's old coat been stolen, he would not have reacted in such a way.  But this was the awakened Akakiy, the one who felt like might just owe him something other than ordinary.  He misses work for the first time and goes to talk to the prominent personage about his overcoat being stolen.  The old Akakiy would never do something so rash.  But the new Akakiy was filled with cat panic and he did something out of character to fix the problem.  When the prominent personage put Akakiy in his place and made him feel like the insignificant person that he actually was, it was too much for Akakiy to bear.  The changes that had befallen him were too great for the simple man whose former life required so little to sustain. So his body said, "screw this life," and abandoned him for death, a place where he could have as many overcoats as he pleased.

 

“The Overcoat” Lesson #3: Having a Sense of Proportion and Dreams of Grandiosity

 Should We Avoid Chimeras That Are Too Common And/Or Too Obvious? The Answer Is Yes and No

1. UCLA, USC, Yale, etc.

2.  4.0 GPA

3. BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, etc.

4. Winning Lotto, getting rich, etc.

5. Acquiring a super model or the equivalent of beauty to satisfy your rapacity.

6. Jewelry, designer clothes, accessories, etc.

On the other hand, the psychological underpinnings of the chimera are universal and therefore "common" in terms of motivation:

1. self-respect and dignity

2. belonging

3. perfection

4. free will

5. freedom

6. creativity

7. control

8. certainty

9. a life without sweat or tears: Hakuna Matata

10. individual distinction that makes you stand out from the herd

Inevitably, the motivations behind the chimera are common, but ideally, the manner in which you choose to describe your chimera will be unique.

Even if you choose a common chimera, like a car, you must be unique in your approach.

You Can Choose a Common Chimera But Only If . . . 

If You Choose a Common Chimera, Your Personal Narrative Has to be Highly Stylized and Rich in Hyperbole.

Secondly, know the movitation and the mood. The following contains the motivation: Ultimate Masculinity; the mood: Intoxication

 

Hi, my name is Jeff and I need a Lexus. I don’t need one because of the many impressive and scintillating Lexus ads I’ve seen on TV, however convincing they may be, but on first-hand knowledge. My Uncle Macy, who resides in Los Angeles, owns a Lexus GS 350 and one hot afternoon after finishing our lunch at the Misto Café, sensing my palpable yearning to drive his car, perhaps evinced by my puppy-eyed stare of longing at the glimmering car key he held in his hand, Macy invited me to sit behind the steering wheel. Here we were, four of my relatives and I, our bellies bursting with gorgonzola tortellini, umpteen loaves of buttered French bread, and tiramisu, sitting inside the Lexus at a steep incline on Crenshaw Blvd. From a dead stop I decided to see how Macy’s Lexus could move up the hill burdened with a thousand pounds of human flesh and with the AC on full-blast and I am here to tell you that his gunmetal Lexus GS 350 with the silver chrome cross-guard automatic shifter didn’t flinch at the daunting task I had given it. It accelerated up the hill with a brassy insouciance that made me feel like I was riding a magic carpet.

The car did not grunt, whine, or complain. To the contrary, it seemed to relish in the opportunity to flex its very capable muscles. I had the feeling that, like the Border collie whose instincts compel him to herd sheep, the Lexus was doing precisely the very thing it was designed to be doing and, as such, was fulfilling its purpose in life. The ergonomics of course were flawless. The seat’s lumbar support so exquisite that my chronic sciatica pains were immediately assuaged.

The steering, contrary to snobbish BMW-owners who snub the Lexus as being “too soft,” was crisp, precise, and empowering.

But to praise the Lexus’ perfect engineering is to dwell on the mundane and the predictable. There were deeper, more important things taking place, namely, I was enjoying the Lexus experience. Within seconds of pressing the gas pedal, a warm oceanic sensation, not unlike arousal, stirred within me. I don’t know how to explain it but for lack of a better word I was overcome by a Lexusation, a delicious tingle that surged up my spine, my neck, and, finally, my brain, filling me with an ecstatic explosion of serotonin neurotransmitters so that, within seconds, I felt I had become one with the car. A missing part of myself had been found. A restlessness that nagged me all my life had ceased as I ascended toward a still diamond-twinkling ocean plane and luxuriated in the Lexus’ Bose eight-speaker system. Like Orpheus, the Lexus had tamed the savage beast.  

But upon exiting the Lexus, something terrible happened to me. I seemed to have lost all my testosterone. I felt like a damsel in a torn dress with mascara running down her face, lost at some obscure bus stop, waiting for Daddy to pick her up after being dumped by her rakish boyfriend. I was lost, disoriented, overcome by self-pity and the sense that I could not go forward with my life.

A similar occurance happens to Akaky in "The Overcoat," which like my Lexus presents the pathology of the chimera evidenced by _____________, ____________, ____________, and ________________. 

 

Chimera of Never Leaving the Security Blanket

As an infant I had assigned the name Geekee to my favorite blanket. Tattered and pee-stained, Geekee was my prize possession, my cocoon of silvery spun silk, which I carried with me every where I went for my first four years on this planet. At night, I rubbed the blanket’s corners on my cheek, the pleasant tickling sensation lulling me to sleep. 

To my consternation, my parents were not as enamored with Geekee as I was. They complained that Geekee smelled. It was threadbare. It had visible stains that I paraded to the public who must have believed that my parents were too cheap to buy me a new blanket. At four years of age I had “outgrown” Geekee, they said, and it was time Geekee and I part ways. Every time they suggested getting rid of it, I would go into a rage that would not subside until they dropped the business of me losing Geekee.  This battle between my parents and me continued until one day, as we were moving across the country from Florida to California my father slyly opened his window and told me to look out the window opposite his, for he said there was a baby alligator on the side of the road. As I looked in vain to spot the alligator, my father ripped Geekee from my hands and threw it out his open window. It all happened so fast that I didn’t know my father had grabbed my blanket. Instead, I believed his lie that the powerful wind had sucked Geekee from my grasp and had flung the blanket out of the window. I told my father to stop the car at once. We had to retrieve Geekee. But my father said we had to keep on going. Besides, he said, Geekee was now keeping the baby alligator warm.  With no mother to fend for him, the little reptile needed the blanket’s warmth far more than I did. Imagining the baby alligator swathed in my blanket consoled me somewhat. At least Geekee had not gone to waste. While losing Geekee had caused a minor trauma, I got over the loss in a day or two.

Everyone has had some form of a Geekee or other, something that comforts us because of the familiarity and the attachment we have formed with it. But security blankets such as a child’s literal blanket are easy to identify. As Gogol's "The Overcoat" shows us, there are other security blankets, far more insidious, that often confine or cripple us without our knowing it so that our dependence on them becomes in essence a Faustian Bargain. To better understand these types of security blankets, we should break them down into four categories. First, there is “the tiger’s claw beneath the velvet carpet,” the comfortable sanctuary that is killing us even as we coast along our stagnant existence without any apparent suffering and therefore have no motivation for change. Second, there is the power symbol, which becomes so important to our sense of status and identity that we coddle it at the expense of respecting others. Third, there are props we rely on because these props, we believe, flatter us and make us more appealing to others.  These props could include a particular wardrobe, a mustache, spiked hair or anything we believe gives us a “special look” that flatters us. These props may have increased our cachet at one time, but over time those who are dependent on their props eventually become pathetic parodies of themselves. Fourth, there are those who are so oblivious to their dependence on security blankets that their entire existence can be defined by a vast network of security blankets from which these dependent souls are forever entangled.

Better, More Specific Chimera Examples

1. Becoming Number One at chess, Internet poker, some computer game or other

2. Botox or some kind of plastic surgery, nose reduction, etc.

3. Achieving your ideal weight

4. A position of power that you abused

5. Carmex lip balm: moisturize and bring youth to your lips; you actually dry them out.

6. All these fruit drinks with edenic trees, birds, and fruits and the words natural; in reality, their high fructorse corn syrup causes liver damage and diabetes.

The Chimera of Power and the VIP

When we abuse power in the spirit of inflating our grandiosity, we lose proportion of the situation and bad things happen to us, a sort of curse, or I should say things blow out of proportion. Know your Power Allowance. Don't overplay it (Johnny Depp, oatmeal, pot stickers)

1.      The Very Important Person has a chimera; it is power and status. The VIP enjoys the cloak of status, a sort of overcoat, and he has power, but does he know how to use it? We all have Power Allowance and we must know where we stand. The VIP is addicted to a life of facade and grandstanding to hide his personal demons. The greater your facade of grandstanding, the harder you fall. Consider "The Caveman Scream."

2.      Before the Very Important Person was a Not Very Important Person; thus he was new to power and this is always dangerous. He is compelled to constantly grandstand and grandstanding always betrays how small and scared we really are. Having a sense of humility and being secure of one's social rank is part of the Iranian idea behind Taarof.

3.      One of the story’s themes is the importance of proportion. Akaky lacks it and so does the Very Important Person. You must have a sense of proportion to be successful in life. The VIP is engorged with power and grandiosity, like the Capos in Man’s Search for Meaning. Power without proportion is solipsism and madness. The VIP’s over reaction to Akaky makes his own friend uncomfortable and perhaps embarrassed for the VIP.

A professor was arrrested for intimidating students because he got so drunk on his power.

4.      The Language of Power has several signs: making people wait, creating ostentatious theatrics and more. Create a list of 10 or so.

5.      The VIP’s rebuke mortifies Akaky to death.

6. Tell the story of the man who dreams of vindicating himself to his former girlfriend before his mother wakes him up. Dreams of grandiosity always betray our smallness and personal failings.

 

An Example about the Abuse of Power as a Chimera

Twenty years ago, a colleague shared with me a story about a professor he knew who became enraged whenever a student in class expressed disagreement with him. He was one of those professors who didn't like independent thinking but rather used the class to massage his narcissitic ego. He’d puff himself up and blurt, “Who’s got the PhD!” as a way of shutting up the contrary student.

Over time this bellicose professor became crazier, opting for an even more intimidating method to silence his students. He’d bring a hand gun, nestled inside the top compartment of his briefcase, which he put flat on the front of his desk. Whenever a student disagreed with him, the professor would slowly open the briefcase so that the students could see the butt of the gun. "What did you say?" he'd ask. "Nothing," the frightened student would respond. "That's what I thought you said," the professor said, ending the disagreement and closing the briefcase. 

Soon after this practice the professor was arrested and no doubt fired from the university.

Clearly, this professor had become deranged by the chimera of power, an intoxicant that poisons the Very Important Person in Gogol's masterpiece, "The Overcoat." Both the professor and the VIP evidence the death blows of the chimera of power evidenced by _______________, ______________, _________________, and ____________________.

 

 

 

“The Overcoat” Lesson #2: Akaky's Brief-Lived Transformation and the Paul McCartney Lookalike

 Chimera Definition Review

There's a huge disconnect between the idea of something and its actuality.

However, sometimes a chimera becomes something Larger Than Life that transforms you in both a good and a bad way. Therefore, the chimera can be full of contradictions, too complex to be demonized or venerated.

One thing for sure, having a chimera will destroy us; and not having a chimera will destroy us.

The More Common Your Chimera Example, The Worse Your Essay Will Be

Some Common chimeras

cars

clothes

weight loss, diets, training, getting your body toned a certain way

money

a love interest

UCLA 

America

Some Lesson Common Chimera Examples

The Past, Nostalgia (old flames on Facebook)

Therapy

Growing up too quickly

Recapturing your youth (making a comeback)

Bigorexia ("I need to weigh 300")

helplessly drawn to the world of the paranormal, ghosts, for example

you think you're "down" or cool, but then you see someone behaving like you and realize you are a helpless nincompoop.

a social circle that you long to belong to but its people have will have nothing to do with you; in fact, the people scorn and mock you even as you repeatedly attempt to gain entrance inside the group.

You want to leave an indelible print on people's memories by virtue of being larger than life, an exemplar of excellent; in other words, you want to become a chimera for others.

You value being part of a large family; however, as you witness your siblings getting married and having in-law problems, you see "the family" as a cespool of hurt feelings, acrimony, and dysfunction.

Being razzle-dazzled by someone you met on a social media site only to find out that the person is a rank avatar, a charlatan, a mountebank, an impostor.

You know someone who explicitly expresses that he is a modest, humble person, yet you always see him bragging about his superior intellectual powers, boasting about how easy he gets A grades in various math and chemistry classes and delighting in your struggle to do half as well as he does.

I love nature. I am socially responsible. I see myself as a "green" person; however, I am too damn lazy to recycle.

My chimera is my superior power to transform my body in the snap of a finger. I can, if need be, lose 12 pounds in a week because of my efficient metabolism and rigorous discipline. In fact, I am deluded and stuck in a malaise of weight gain that compromises my self-image.

I once saw myself as someone who someday would be a successful novelist, but now 30 years later and still unpublished I'm reduced to tweeting about my quest for efficient digestion.

 

 

Chimera Is a Mixed Bag. It's Destructive, But Also Transforming in a Good Way

 

1.      You haven't really lived unless you've found a Higher Purpose that motivates you to commit extreme sacrifices. Akaky’s transformation: he wakes up from his slumber, his Jahiliyyah, and becomes fully human.

Additionally, he learns how to sacrifice in the most extreme ways: he gives up tea, candles, walking on his socks, reduces his laundry to cut down on laundry expenses and to make his clothes last longer.

He doesn't sacrifice with misery. To the contrary, he enjoys this new state of sacrifice and living for something LARGER THAN HIMSELF. 

One of the story's major themes:

All of us are lost in the Jahiliyyah until we find something larger than our vain, self-centered preoccupations. 

Here we've arrived at the human condition: We are miserable, restless, anxious, self-involved, selfish, and bereft until we find Something Larger Than Ourselves to live for. This is the message of religion, philosophy, humanism, creativity, etc. We must be awakened from the Jahiliyyah, the protracted period of darkness and ignorance which defines Akaky's life. 

But some might argue that the overcoat is simply another Jahiliyya, a chimera come to make a fool of Akaky. 

The dream of the overcoat--either a delusion or a Higher Purpose, feeds Akaky's imagination, gives him hope, and makes his life more full. He feels like a married man with more a sharp focus. “He’s livelier, stronger, a man who’s made up his mind and established a goal.”

His body language changes and his eyes burn with fire. There is no hesitation or wavering in his expressions, just conviction and passion. He is born again, either spiritually or like a guy in a Lexus commercial.

The story is too ambiguous for one interpretation. He has a new charisma that inspires his boss to give him an extra Christmas bonus.

When we have a purpose in life, we are more than glad to make sacrifices. But when life is empty and is simply a monotony, then we can barely get out of bed. This is why we need chimera. A chimera gives us purpose, a reason to live, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

But be warned: A chimera can also kill us.

2.      The overcoat has magical powers; it makes him happy; he doesn’t care where he walks; he suddenly finds himself at the doorstep of his department. His life is like a giddy dream, the promise of so many ads. The Chanel No. 5 Moment has come.

A brutal truth about superficial reality, materialism, and consumerism is that these things go deep into us and change who we are at our very core.

Let us repeat this: Material objects change us on the outside but they also change us on the inside. They are like placebos and we change on the inside when people treat us differently. People treat us differently because they are reacting to our new self-confidence: Whether the confidence is born from reality or delusion, it does not matter.

3.      After AA acquires the overcoat, people become obsequious sycophants and treat him like a celebrity. When people fawn over us, we turn into the image they worship and we inevitably go insane because we lose sight of ourselves. We become the image that is worshipped. Be careful of what you wish for. Discuss the Paul McCartney case and use his looks as an example of an overcoat that results in insanity. 

4.      Why does Akaky laugh at the picture of the woman baring her leg while a whiskered man espies her? It appears the ad is a reflection of the attention Akaky is enjoying. For the first time in AA's life, he is getting his ego tickled and massaged.

5.      Because he was so needy and desperate, Akaky could not tolerate being separated from the overcoat after it was stolen from him. You cannot let an object, or even another person, be your salvation. You have to be whole first. Once Akaky has tasted human connection, he cannot return to his life of isolation, which he now sees for what it really is: an unbearable hell.

Another lesson from the chimera: It creates needs and a dependence that did not exist before the chimera existed in our imagination. The chimera is in part about our dependence on obsession and a lot of our obsessions are centered around security, belonging, and admiration.

6.      Akaky without his overcoat must face the great monstrosity of the impersonal bureaucracy and this only reinforces his smallness and insignificance.

You could talk about the 10 distinguishing characteristics of the bureaucracy.

1. The bureacracy exists to perpetuate itself, NOT to provide competent service.

2. The bureacracy thrives on the status quo and willfully ignores problems that might reveal deep-rooted dysfunctionality within the bureacracy.

3. The bureacracy thrives on petty rules and regulations while failing to provide its general mission.

4. The bureacracy reinforces the authority, those in charge, while belittling those who come to be served by it.

5. The bureacracy is a Giant Beast that consumes everyone associated with it: Its employees and the people is presumably serves.

6. The bureacracy is as slow moving as an ice berg. When it needs to change course, the change is excruciatingly slow, too slow in fact.

7. Certain types of people are drawn to the bureacracy: Small-minded, petty, mediocre, bovine people.

8. The bureacracy is based on paper work. More paper work creates more subdivisions, which in turn create more jobs. A bureacracy can never have enough paper work, forms, photocopies, attachments, annotations, revisions, addendums, etc.

9. Contrary to its high-minded rhetoric about morals and ethics, bureacracies can always be bribed as long as the bribe is implicit and there is an assurance of its essential clandestine nature. 

10. Bureacracies embody the Peter Principle: They promote their employees to their maximum level of incompetence.

Conclusion about the Bureacracy As It Pertains to AA:

The Overcoat humanized, uplifted, and elevated AA for the first time in his life. In contrast, the bureacracy, head by the Very Important Person, dehumanized AA to the point of death.

 

Possible Essay Structure

Paragraph 1. Introduction: Profile someone who enjoyed the glory of an "overcoat" (chimera) followed by his or her demise. 

Paragraph 2. Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping statements

Paragraphs 3-9: Elaborate on your mapping statements

Paragraph 10: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis

Last page: Works Cited with no fewer than 4 sources

 Example

I used to know a Bakersfield man, a Paul McCartney look-alike, who was fated to live in the shadow of the great celebrity. He had the same nose, mouth, chin, ruddy jowls, sad-shaped eyes, and arched brows. He has the same hair, which he kept groomed the way McCartney did in the 1970s and 1980s, long in the back and feathered in the front.

However, Bakersfield McCartney was a tad shorter, stockier, and most noticeably had acne scars peppered on his cheeks. I first noticed him “trolling” himself at clubs, standing by himself in his black sport jacket, his “Beatles jacket,” and patiently waiting for an attractive woman to approach him and “break the ice” by commenting on how much he looked like Paul McCartney, as thousands of past successes had taught him. At clubs he would wear a stupid half-grin since his brain didn’t really have to be active in any sense as he simply used his resemblance as bait. The whole pick-up sequence must have been a rote, perfunctory affair.

Perhaps his biggest challenge was trying to show that his heart hadn’t become too calloused by this routine and that the woman fawning all over him was one of a few to make the brilliantly observant connection between him and the real Paul McCartney.

I later saw Bakersfield McCartney at my health club, where he had the same dumb half-grin on his face. His expression betrayed a certain expectancy, as if he knew it was only a matter of minutes before an attractive woman approached him and commented on his celebrity resemblance, a precursor to greater pleasures ahead.

Not surprisingly, I later found out that Bakersfield McCartney was a salesman—of cars and cell phones mostly—and that his resemblance worked to his advantage in the sales arena. All he had to do when people gawked over his resemblance to the great Beatles legend was act coy and “Ah-shucks,” and he could remain effective in the realm of sales—whether it be cars, cell phones, or, at the clubs, himself.

You could tell by looking over his life that he had no real challenges other than feigning good-natured surprise when the 99% of people he met commented on his striking resemblance to Paul McCartney. Otherwise, he was content to live in the shadows of the Liverpool crooner. Last I heard, he had never married, had never carried a long relationship, had never really put much effort in anything he did at all. He was a man content to live off a one-note gimmick and he had no shame for being so easily satisfied. Lacking any rigorous struggles to become a real person, he had become somewhat of a cipher, a hollow man with nothing to say about anything. His mind was simply full of the expectations of receiving “goodies”—accolades, sexual attention, strangers’ obsequiousness as they become elated in the presence of a mock celebrity.

His life lost its cheap glory in middle-age when his facial features distorted—bigger ears and nose, a reconfiguration of jowls and chin—so as to significantly obscure his face so that he no longer looked like the Beatles legend.  With no more celebrity connection, his posse of friends and lovers abandoned him and his sales dwindled. Sullen and bitter, he moved back with his mother, a widow, where he now resides. I imagine him now introverted and chubby from a sedentary lifestyle, his bedroom cluttered with Beatles souvenirs, as he languishes in his bedroom where he daydreams of his past glory.

Similary, Akaky Akakievich from Gogol's masterpiece "The Overcoat" is a man fated to ruin after bathing in the short-lived glory of his own facade, an almost supernatural overcoat. What we see in the case of the lugubrious lookalike and equally pathetic Akaky is that to be enthralled by a chimera is to go through a journey of madness, which includes ___________, ______________, _____________, and _______________. 

“The Overcoat” Lesson #1: The Contradictory Symbolic Meanings of the Overcoat

 

Essay Assignment

The Overcoat and Other Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol: In a 6-page research paper write an extended definition of the word chimera by comparing the "overcoat" to an “overcoat” from your personal life. Or interview someone who was overtaken by a chimera. 

What Is a Chimera?

Chimera is an obsession that fills your imagination and fuels all your actions often leading to inflated expectations, self-destruction, but sometimes bringing you in touch with your Higher Self.

The chimera is based on loss of proportion and exaggeration. 

Often your imagination exaggerates the value of a chimera so that when you finally acquire it--if you should ever acquire it at all--you are left with grave disappointment. 

The Chimera as a Positive Force

One student defends the chimera as thus:

"The good news is that chimeras have at least five hidden benefits to them: one, they tend to push people out of their comfort zones; two, they help people explore their potential; three, they help promote creativity; four, they teach extremly painful lessons when the illusion if finally shattered; five, they redirect us to what we're really meant for in a roundabout fashion."

There Are 4 Major Types of Chimeras

One. The Simplistic Ideal That Blinds Us from Complex Reality of Others

People see me walking my babies and they think I'm a "great father." Really? I'm a good father, not great, in spite of myself. What am I? Petulant, malcontented, self-involved, neurotic, selfish, vain, etc. People see me with my babies and they idealize who I am.

People see my babies who are adorable and these people idealize my babies. One of my daughters, Natalie, almost killed me the other day. While I was changing her diaper, she jabbed me in the eye, pushing my tender orb deep into my brain. I was almost killed. As I screamed, she laughed spittle in my face. In spite of her huge cute factor, she's devious and feral and aggressive.

Two. We Project Exaggerated Grandiosity to Someone Or Something So That We Lose All Sense of Proportion

We buy an Apple product so we'll become more creative or become a member of the cool hipster class. We buy an Audi or a Mini Cooper for the same reason.

We buy a house because a house is a chimera for a sense of home but in making house payments, three times greater than our rent, we ruin our life.

Three. We Chase Something Because We're in Love with the Chase and the Idea of the Thing We're Pursuing, But We Don't Love the Actual Thing. Nor Do We Love Finding It.

Marriage, romance, the perfect soulmate, the perfect body, the ultimate sports car, the perfect watch (my chimera).

Four. An Inflated Self-Image That Doesn't Corrospond with the Facts

"I'm a vegetarian, but I do have to make some exceptions. For example, I eat barbecue tri-tip once a month. A gourmet cheeseburger 12 times a year. Buttermilk fried chicken 6 times a year. Barbecued steak 6 times a year at family events. Turkey and mashed potatoes 4 times a year when I'm at my grandmother's. Briscuit on Hanukkha if I'm invited to my cousin Sherry's house (her briscuit has destroyed the committment of many vegetarians). And if I'm in North or South Carolina and I'm a guest being served baby back pork ribs, I will eat what's on my plate in order to exercise politness and decorum. Apart from that, I feel really good about my vegetarian lifestyle. "

Here is a guy who eats meat at least once or twice a week and he calls himself a vegetarian. What he really is: a faketarian.

There are several chimera motivations based on natural human longing:

1. Enchantment: craving the beyond, otherness, mystery, the visions you might enjoy during a serotonin-rich dream. Some people believe in UFOs, unicorns, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman, fairies, angels, etc. 

2. Ideal of perfection: beauty, a "six-pack," the perfect house, etc.

3. Security blanket, feeling protected by someone, the Earth Mother, Daddy, the Corporation, Steve Jobs Is Your Tech Daddy, Apple, etc. 

4. Hakuna Matata, a paradise where there are no worries, a life without responsibility, only pleasure. Hawaii and Tahiti are often assigned Hakuna Matata while people ignore the high alcoholism.

5. fame, the dream of the engorged ego in which the whole world loves you and can't get enough of you. You become a sort of demigod, a cult figure. You become drunk from your own grandiosity and adulation. 

6. vindication, proving your doubters that you are good and feeling validated

7. revenge: exacting "justice" on your enemy. 

8. Losing yourself, your sense of insignificance, in something larger than yourself and achieving transcendence and a sense of belonging. 

Examples

 

Some of us join religion.

Some of us fall in love.

Some of us sing songs about falling in love.

Some of us write songs about songwriters who write about being in love.

Some of us join the international club.

Some of us buy a Mini Cooper and go to "Mini Cooper events" with other Mini Cooper owners.

Some of us buy Apple computer products and think we're more creative than those who work with PCs.

Some of us buy tres chic designer clothes and we only hang out with other stuck up people who wear similar clothing.

Some of us become sports fanatics for our team. Our bedroom is covered with posters, souvineers, stuffed dolls, figurines, etc. We wear our sports hero's jersey, cap, etc.

Some of us join political movements and we act serious all the time and watch serious movies, usually with subtitles, about the pain of the human condition and we go to cafes with other "intellectuals" who share our political views and we talk about how crappy the world is.

Some of us join book clubs.

Some of us spend 24 hours a day on Facebook.

We become obsessed with something that makes us feel we've lost ourselves in something larger than us and gives us a sense of belonging and identity. 

 

Not All Chimeras Are Equal: Or Some People's Chimeras Are Better Than Others

 Our chimera is crucial to determining what path we take. 

A crackpot racist ideology is not the same as searching for the perfect six-pack abs or baking the perfect chocolate cake.  

For the most part, a chimera is a mirage, an illusion. It is the result of our imagination elevating something boring or stupid or banal to the supernatural because we are desperate to lose ourselves into something supernatural.

It could be said that this something could be a dangerous chimera or a worthy ideal. But even that distinction is often very difficult to make. 

Main Components of the Story

 

1.      Lugubrious name: Akaky Akakievich; his clothes have hay and trash sticking on them; he is ugly with wrinkled cheeks and inflamed complexion. He is a sad sack. His image is grotesque and cartoonish, maybe even super natural. A horse sneezes snot on him and he does not notice it. Because he is so lonely, he is vulnerable to falling into the trap of the chimera.

2.      Asperger Syndrome or as my Japanese students explain to me, Akaky is an example of "Otaku." He is ritualistic, anti-social; he takes an unnatural pleasure in copying with no varying activities to relieve the pressure. He takes pleasure in his self-induced prison, a place he feels free. He has anxieties when work is not given to him. He takes work home and copies for his own pleasure and relaxation. He eats soup with flies in it. His rituals and his compulsive need to lose himself in his work have created a wall around him that insulates him from his problem, namely, that he has never grown up as an evolved human being. He lives like an embryo, he has a certain innocence about him, but his innocence is based on ignorance and retarded development and is therefore not a virtue. Having a threadbare overcoat, refusing to clothe himself with necessitites, becomes a life of extremes, and a sort of overcoat, a facade to hide himself from his real problems.

3.      Anal-retentive: This is part of Akaky's pathology, to live inward, to cling to his habits, to shield himself from the flux; he is very much like the scrivener in the great story "Bartelby the Scrivener," a copier who lives like a slave to his job, but his slavery is self-induced because he does not know how to live or to love; he lives in intractable isolation but knowing nothing better he persuades himself that he is happy.

4.      Supernatural in the story like the “unseen force” that stops people from going overboard in their teasing of him at the office. The Northern Cold of St. Petersburg is another super natural force. The wind returns at the end of the story to wreak havoc on the Very Importan Person. The wind accompanies the ghost.

5.      Akaky is content with his fate and enjoys ignorant bliss, but he is not truly born as of yet. This leads to philosophical question: Can we be happy and free if we live sequestered in embryonic ignorance?

And at an unconscious level, he has a lot of unresolved anger pertaining to his low station in life. In Korean, there is a word for this: "Hwatbyung," simmering anger that makes us behave in compulsive, self-destructive ways.

6.      Akaky is awakened from his ignorant bliss by a blast of cold while walking to work. Is his old overcoat ready to be mended or replaced? His overcoat is mocked and called the peignoir, a woman’s negligee. He is afraid to let go of his old tattered overcoat, which has become a security blanket; he is a man who hates change. For Akaky change is the great enemy, the great fear.

7.      Petrovich the tailor is a devil figure with tortoise shell toe nails, ammonia smells; the “one-eyed devil” who drinks vodka. He drinks more alcohol on holy days.

8.      Akaky’s encounter with Petrovich is analogous to Adam taking from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He will be expulsed from his ignorant paradise. Curiosity is the first step in being fully human.

9.      Petrovich's argument that Akaky MUST get a NEW overcoat inflames Akaky's imagination and he is never the same again. Hope is a new garment we have never worn; despair is not knowing it. Two lines from Kierkegaard. The word “new” intoxicates Akaky.

10.  It seems Akaky’s life of extreme repression feeds the life of extreme euphoria over an opposite, an extravagance. Here we face the Jungian Shadow.

11.     The overcoat has many symbolic meanings, all contradictory: chimera, hunger for life; increased consciousness, leaving the womb or the Mother; returning to the womb or the Mother; the libido ostentandi; love; consumer identity, a security blanket, an ideal that is larger than yourself and requires a sacrifice, consumer greed, hope, rebirth, regression; God as the Great Companion Who Never Abandons Us, all the facades and masks we wear. It means all these things.

12.  You must write an introduction of your own personal overcoat, your own security blanket, in your case your blanket Geekee, Dashiki, and The Man Who Loved Radios Too Much, Paul McCartney, Caveman Scream. Write one for every lecture. 

We all have an overcoat, a lifechanging experience from a chimera or non-chimera that transforms us dramatically.

What was my overcoat?

The Intellect.

In 1980 at the age of 19 I realized I was woefully ignorant and I was convinced that reading books, not ones the professors assigned but the ones I wanted to read, would develop The Intellect, my intellect, and this Intellect was desirable in that it would save me in the same way that Akaky obsessed over his Overcoat.

Was my Intellect a chimera?

Yes and no.

Yes, there were times when I overemphasized The Intellect and elevated it into a panacea so that I believed The Intellect would cure me of all my problems.

But there were other times when the Intellect was simply a good thing, a vehicle from leaving the darkness of ignorance, arrogance, and entropy.

Sometimes I would feed the Intellect too much so that it was an evil Beast rendering me introverted, anti-social and unbalanced.

Other times, the rigorous demands of the Intellect made me a better, more disciplined person.

The Intellect's greatest dangers are pride and arrogance.

The Intellect's greatest assets are humility (the more I know, the more I realized how much I don't know) and metacognition (thinking about thinking about thinking; also called The Third Eye).

Contradictions about the Chimera

It is an evil beast that destroys us.

It is an elevating creature that gives us a purpose and meaning in life.

We can't live with chimeras. We cannot live without them.

But I like to put it this way:

Having a chimera will kill you; not having a chimera will kill you. 

One of the Modern Age's Most Common Chimeras: Facebook

Is Facebook a Chimera? Yes and No

Facebook is a great vehicle for finding and meeting old friends and new acquaintences, but the idea of "friendship" can become a dangerous chimera.

The 10 Signs That Facebook Has Become a Self-Destructive Chimera and You Should Probably Delete Your Facebook Account

 

 

1. You start “sharing” increasing gradations of meaningless trivia with your “friends” like what kind of dog food you purchased, what kind of nail polish you’re using before vacationing in Maui, how taking Omega-3 fish oil capsules makes you burp, etc.
2. You’re spending 18 hours a day “managing” your friends’ comments ("No one has commented on my juicy entry that was posted almost 30 minutes ago. Damn them all!") and losing more perspective on what’s important in your life like getting out of the house, making real friends, and embarking on something truly creative.
3. You become paranoid as to why a “friend” deleted you from his or her friends list and start losing sleep over why more and more Facebook people are deleting you from their existence.
4. You become jealous and resentful when you see a “friend” commenting on someone’s “boring” post but that same person ignored your more “interesting” post.
5. You start competing with your other  Facebook “friends” for amassing more and more friends and comments.
6. You fret when none of your Facebook friends wish you Happy Birthday.
7. You obsess over the fact that one of your lifelong friends is engaging in more Facebook activity with a new Facebook acquaintance who has demoted your friendship ranking.
8. You lose Facebook friends because you don’t reciprocate their offers to play Bubble Shooter, Pokemon Tower Defense, Trollface Launch, Whack Your Boss, and other games that require too much time for anyone who is gainfully employed.
9. You become a Facebook snob, rejecting friend invitations from people who have fewer than 300 Facebook friends.
10. You become a Facebook elitist only accepting friend invitations from people who have a bare minimum of a Masters Degree, share your political beliefs, and have published or produced a work of art that was reviewed by a major publication.

Example of an Introduction, Transition, and Thesis

Billy and I rode our bicycles around in circles tirelessly on our street, taking breaks only to grab a quick lunch and dinner.

It was July. Without warning, an evening rain hit us. The tropical winds, wet and refreshing, excited Billy and me and we wanted to stay outside on our bikes forever.

Around twilight in our rain-soaked clothes, we noticed something in a distant field, a solitary house or shack with lights beaming from it. Blue and pulsating, the lights blazed through the early evening mist. What could the source of light be? Then one of us—I don’t remember which—realized that the flickering glow could be no other than Christmas lights. Someone had put up Christmas lights in preparation for an early Christmas. We’d circle Venado Court and when we’d look across the field every few minutes or so, one or both of us would scream, “Christmas lights!”

The idea of Christmas in July filled us with longing and a tingle filled my chest and stomach. We ached for Christmas, more so on this wet summer evening than we ever had in December perhaps because it was so implausible that it seemed like a miracle, a divine gift that defied all normal expectations. 

Dad came out on the front porch and told me it was too dark and wet to be riding my bike. I ignored him. Billy and I continued to circle the court and shout, “Christmas lights!”

We continued our vigil of the twinkling house in the distant house the with Dad coming out to call me a couple of more times before he lost his patience and walked out to get me. He pulled me off my bike with great force and rolled it home while pinching my ear. All the while, I kept shouting “Christmas lights!”

At night I thought of the magical house in the distant field and cried myself to sleep. I was no more consoled the next morning. For the next several days all Dad heard about was my obsession with the Christmas lights. He was sick of it. Finally, he decided to put an end to all this Christmas light nonsense once and for all, so he told me to get in the car. We were going to confront this imaginary house in the field that had been the source of so much uproar. The damn house with the Christmas lights.

We drove across the field and I discovered that the house was no house at all but a bait and tackle shop. And what I had thought were Christmas lights were actually neon beer signs. Dad stopped the car and told me to go inside. He approached the cold box, picked up a bottle of beer and looked at me. Gloating, he seemed to relish in seeing me lose my illusion, my pathetic little chimera.

Indeed, as we read in Gogol's masterpiece "The Overcoat," the chimera dooms us to disappointment evidenced by its power to ____________, ___________, _______________, and ______________. 

In-class Activity

In one or two sentences, explain a chimera that possessed you and transformed your life, for better or worse. 

Overcoat Essay Assignment and Outline (Includes Links and Thematic Ideas)

Analyze the story's overcoat as a particular symbol or metaphor and elaborate on this analysis of the metaphor or analogy throughout your essay. 

Paragraph 1. Introduction

Paragraph 2. Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping statements

Paragraphs 3-9: Elaborate on your mapping statements

Paragraph 10: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis

Last page: Works Cited with no fewer than 4 sources

Sources

The Rich Fabric of Invention

PDF online version of the story

Comparison of Gogol's "The Overcoat" and the Fall of Adam

McMahon Lecture on Breakthrough Writer

Ciphers, Poshlost, & Where Language Fails

Overcoat Metaphor

Overcoat Lecture

PDF Essay

Book Excerpt

Another Excerpt

Part of a pay site "dream essay"