The Overcoat

Author:  Nikolai Gogol (Ukrainian, 1809-1852)
Published: 1842
Category: Society
Text: Classic Reader

Summary:
An impoverished clerk spends his life savings on a new overcoat which is subsequently stolen; when his appeals to authority, for justice, prove futile, he dies of grief and cold. Shortly after the city is haunted by an apparition who steals the coats off people's backs.

Analysis:
In this story Gogol makes fun of minor officials and the insignificant in Russian society; although he manages to inject a sense of feeling for both. In speaking of the petty authority who scared the wits out of the protagonist, Akakiy, he tells us

"Suffering was unpleasant to him, for his heart was accessible to many good impulses, in spite of the fact that his rank often prevented his showing his true self."

And of the men the protagonist worked with, most of whom were inclined to make fun of him, there was at least one who was not so harsh.

"There was in it something which moved to pity; so much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern by the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akakiy, suddenly stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and presented itself in a different aspect."

And in the tailor, Petrovitch, who makes the new overcoat, we are shown that even the down-trodden take pride in their work and aspire to greater things, if only they could be given the opportunity.

"Taking out the cloak, he gazed proudly at it, held it up with both hands, and flung it skilfully over the shoulders of Akakiy Akakievitch....Petrovitch did not neglect to observe that it was only because he lived in a narrow street, and had no signboard, and had known Akakiy Akakievitch so long, that he had made it so cheaply; but that if he had been in business on the Nevsky Prospect, he would have charged seventy-five rubles for the making alone."

But throughout there is the overriding Russian sense of fate, of men being made what they are by their names and the  circumstances of their lives:

"His name was Akakiy Akakievitch. It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched, but he may rest assured that it was by no means farfetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other."

And the only hope for a little justice comes after death.

"But the horror of the important personage transcended all bounds when he saw the dead man's mouth open, and, with a terrible odour of the grave, gave vent to the following remarks: "Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that -- by the collar! I need your cloak; you took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me; so now give up your own."

Byezhin Prairie

Author: Ivan Turgenev (Russian, 1818-1883)
Published: 1852
Category: Sketch
Text: archive.org

Summary:
A huntsman loses his way home at dusk, coming across a camp fire set up by a group of young boys herding horses. As he lazes nearby he listens to the boys tell each other stories of house spirits, water nymphs, near deaths, accidental deaths, mad women, sorrowful men and the anti-christ; at one point, the ugliest of the boys rushes out into the night to scare off a wolf, the same boy later goes to the river for water and returns saying he heard the ghost of a drowned boy call his name.  The sketch ends with the huntsmen saying what a pity it was that the same boy 'met his end' that year.

Analysis:
This sketch reminds me of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; it has the same combination of pastoral setting and superstition. Both authors are wonderful at describing landscape; Turgenev skilfully leads us through a changing scenery; moving us from daylight, through dusk into night; from the sun's glare to the moon's weak light; from the heights to the valley; from firm and dusty roads to damp, soft grasses; from a dawn of reason to a night of superstition.  The narrator does not enter this world, he is not one of the boys, rather, he observes them in their natural habitat. And here lies the main difference between Turgenev and Irving, for Irving was one of the boys; proud to be a living, breathing part of the American landscape while Turgenev leaves the impression he enjoys riding freely across the Russian landscape but is not, and never has been, truly part of it.

The Embassy of Cambodia

Author: Zadie Smith (English, 1975- )
Published: 2013
Category: Modern
Text: The New Yorker

Summary: The daily movements of a young African woman, working as a servant in a middle class London home, located on the same street as the Cambodian Embassy, are observed.

Analysis:
The opening line of the story, "Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody."  is a paraphrase of Monty Python's "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"  and immediately one gets a sense that something unappealing in English middle class life is about to be revealed; and we are not disappointed, because the next few lines place us firmly in a North London suburban street, only now its little villas, with their private swimming pools, are also occupied by Arabs and, of all things, the Embassy of Cambodia.

There are a number of themes running through the story: the heard but unseen badminton game, the stealthy swims, the all-knowing friend, the Western back-packers entering the embassy; all in support of an overriding theme of unsympathetic detachment. The whole story leaves one feeling we are back in elementary school, the teacher has pinned a picture of a young black woman sitting on the sidewalk, in the drizzling rain, surrounded by her few belongings packed into shopping bags at her feet, and it is our task to describe how she came to be there. And the story we create is full of reasons that absolve us of any need for sympathy or empathy.

The young woman is an interloper in our society, just as she uses guest passes to her employer's club, without their permission, she is here, on this street, in this place, without ours. Her situation is not our doing but the world's, whose values have crept in and displaced ours, just as the Arabs and the Cambodian Embassy have moved into our street and physically displaced our English neighbours . It is up to Fatou, the girl, to "make her own arrangements" and not be fatuous about it; is it our fault she doesn't know she is a slave? that she has rights?

And the irony is, Fatou and those like her, are as detached from us as we are from them; being totally unaware that they are as vital to our sustained life as Fatou's presence was to Asma's life the day the child swallowed a marble; for in the end, we are all, English or not, middle-class or working class, Arab or Cambodian; as gormless as the narrator.