Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Prose; Simple, Rambling
Duh it's prose, we hear you say. Normally that might be the case, but Russian literature was going through some interesting times when Gogol was writing. Before the 1830s the majority of Russian literature was poetry, not prose (the stuff you find in novels), so it was pretty revolutionary for him to write this way. Not only that, but he ended up being one of a group of authors who actually pioneered what many people think of as Russian literature today. Pretty impressive, if you ask us.
Russian literature is characterized by fairly simple, straightforward language. For example:
They began to congratulate him, and to say pleasant things to him, so that he began at first to smile, and then he grew ashamed. (66)
We are going to guess that there are almost no words that you aren't familiar with. People don't laude him or make susurrus in his ear. There's probably a reason for that. Akaky is a simple man, and he can barely make sentences, let alone pronounce complex words. So the writing style puts us in the mind frame of a simple guy just like him.
Oh, and one more thing. "The Overcoat" contains one of the most famous examples of the periodic sentence. It's a writing style that emphasizes its point by putting the main idea at the end of a long sentence full of subordinate clauses and modifiers. It's one of the rare times where the writing style goes from being simple to being crazy complex. Here it is, in all its long-winded glory:
Even at the hour when the gray Petersburg sky had quite disappeared, and all the world of officials had eaten or dined, each as he could, in accordance with the salary he received, and his own fancy; when all were resting from the departmental jar of pens, running to and fro, their own and other people's indispensable occupations and all the work that an uneasy man makes willingly for himself, rather than what is necessary; when officials hasten to dedicate to pleasure the time that is left to them —one bolder than the rest goes to the theater; another, into the streets, devoting it to the inspection of some bonnets; one wastes his evening in compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official circle; one—and this is the most common case of all—goes to his comrades on the fourth or third floor, to two small rooms with an ante-room or kitchen, and some pretensions to fashion, a lamp or some other trifle which has cost many a sacrifice of dinner or excursion—in a word, even at the hour when all officials disperse among the contracted quarters of their friends, to play at whist, as they sip their tea from glasses with a kopek's worth of sugar, draw smoke through long pipes, relating at times some bits of gossip which a Russian man can never, under any circumstances, refrain from, or even when there is nothing to say, recounting everlasting anecdotes about the commandant whom they had sent to inform that the tail of the horse on the Falconet Monument- had been cut off—in a word, even when all strive to divert themselves, Akaky Akakievich yielded to no diversion. (15)
Gogol tells us about everything the people of St. Petersburg do in such great detail, making a huge sentence just to emphasize how Akaky doesn't do anything besides work in his free time. When you see all of the fun that he could be having, it really hits home. The sentence illustrates a bustling crowd of people and brings the city to life, but Akaky is still all alone at the very end of the sentence. Not only is he isolated in life, but the very writing style of the story repeats his isolation. Poor guy.