ew is championed by Karlinsky, who complains that Russian critics in the nineteenth century "enveloped it in a thick fog of sentimentalization" (Karlinsky 54). He says it was identified as "the beginning of the philanthropic trend in Russian literature, the first depiction of the 'insulted and injured' little man, the first realistic depiction of poverty and any number of other literary firsts" (Karlinsky 54). This earlier view would agree with Elizabeth C. Shepard, who finds a social message in the work, citing Gogol as to what he intended. She notes that the work can be viewed as a standard for other writers seeking to discredit elitism, cosmopolitanism, and lack of truth in Russian literature:
But Gogol himself appears to reveal a polemical lining in his garment when he implies at the outset of "The Overcoat" that he is coming to the defense of the chinovnik, "a person who, as everyone knows, has been sneered at and joked about at will by various writers who have the praiseworthy habit of setting upon those who cannot stand up for themselves" (Shepard 301).
Both critics are emphasizing the realism of the work and the social commentary that goes along with this realism. This was the view of early critics as well:
The criticism of "The Overcoat" during the nineteenth century, which was, of course, dominantly Russian, tended to focus on the "social" aspects in the tale, reading it as an declaration of the basic human rights of even a "lowly clerk" like Akaky Akakievich (Hilliker).
The same theme is cited by Lindstrom when he notes that the short story "returns to bureaucratic officialdom versus the little man" (Lindstrom 88), the theme that is found in other stories by Gogol, though in this story it is treated with greater concentration on style and meaning. The source of the story has been described by Gogol, who heard a story in 1834 about an indigent civil servant and ardent sportsman who deprived himself for some y...