Comedy, Parable, Satire, and Naturalism
If there's one thing that Gogol is known for, it's comedy (even though most of the time that comedy turns into horror by the end of the story, like with Akaky's ghost, but it still counts). Gogol's comedy often stems from his satirization of Russian culture. This story is no different.
From the very first line of the overcoat, Gogol lets us know how he feels about Russian bureaucracy:
They say that, quite recently, a complaint was received from a justice of the peace, in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs, and that his sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a huge volume of some romantic composition, in which the justice of the peace appears about once in every ten lines, sometimes in a drunken condition. (1)
The point of a satire is to highlight the excesses, ills, and general ridiculousness of a culture. Today we might satirize people's tendencies to obsess over their smartphones or social media accounts, but in Gogol's day people were really caught up with the social hierarchy in bureaucratic departments. If you ask us, we'd choose Facebook over that any day.
Gogol's dry humor is peppered throughout "The Overcoat," like at Akaky's baptism, where "[...]they christened the child, whereat he wept, and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councilor" (5). It's moments like this that make us laugh in the midst of the otherwise rather bleak story.
Let's talk about Naturalism. It's a literary genre that grew out of realism, which was seriously obsessed with depicting everyday situations as they really were, right down to the nitty-gritty details. The difference? Naturalists felt that their characters were heavily influenced by outside forces like social conditions, environment, and genetics. Naturalist stories also tend to be pessimistic and have "objective" narrators.
You're probably pretty familiar with this style of writing, so it's nothing new to you. But think about this: in Gogol's time the majority of Russian literature was poetry and the prose, far from the realistic, dare we say…conversational…tone Gogol is known for. Gogol seemed positively avant-garde with his (mostly) pessimistic story about a boring little clerk overwhelmed by society's rules. His influence on the authors after him is so strong that he's probably the reason Russian literature is known for being so pessimistic. Everyone from Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy just hopped on Gogol's Naturalism train. These guys were definitely the original emo kids.
Last up, let's take a moment to examine "The Overcoat" as a parable. A parable is normally a short and simple story meant to deliver some kind of life lesson. They often focus on a character facing some kind of moral dilemma, follows them through the decision that they make, and describes the consequences. Akaky is faced with a dilemma that doesn't seem moral at first glance, but gets pretty deep pretty fast once you look further into the meaning of the story. Akaky makes a decision, and that decision impacts everything else that happens in the story. At least half of "The Overcoat" is just describing the fallout from Akaky's decision to buy a new overcoat. The lesson here? Don't buy a new coat; or in other words, don't be envious of high social ranking. And get used to freezing your butt off in the cold Russian winter.