bundu khan in lahore taught me something about life
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I have of late been thinking about Nikolai Gogol’s short story, The Overcoat; one of those rare pieces of literature that is sublime owing to something more than its layers of irony and tragedy. It’s the author’s quiet understanding of the human condition that makes it so personal. Akakiy Akakievitch, a lower class worker, lives a small life as an insignificant titular councilor in an unnamed Russian government office. He’s portrayed as someone without a silhouette: light or dark, Akakiy always just blends in. “When and at what time he entered the department and who appointed him, no one could recall. However many directors and other superiors came and went, he was always to be seen in one and the same place, in the same position, in the same capacity, as the same copying clerk, so that after a while they became convinced that he must simply have been born into the world ready-made, in a uniform, and with a balding head.” The premise is Akakiy’s lack of position in the world: he garners no respect from anyone around him and is rather treated in a peculiar offhand manner throughout the story. “In the department he was shown no respect at all. The caretakers not only did not rise from their places when he passed, but did not even look at him, as if a mere fly had flown through the reception room.”
bundu khan in lahore taught me something about life
bundu khan in lahore taught me something…
bundu khan in lahore taught me something about life
I have of late been thinking about Nikolai Gogol’s short story, The Overcoat; one of those rare pieces of literature that is sublime owing to something more than its layers of irony and tragedy. It’s the author’s quiet understanding of the human condition that makes it so personal. Akakiy Akakievitch, a lower class worker, lives a small life as an insignificant titular councilor in an unnamed Russian government office. He’s portrayed as someone without a silhouette: light or dark, Akakiy always just blends in. “When and at what time he entered the department and who appointed him, no one could recall. However many directors and other superiors came and went, he was always to be seen in one and the same place, in the same position, in the same capacity, as the same copying clerk, so that after a while they became convinced that he must simply have been born into the world ready-made, in a uniform, and with a balding head.” The premise is Akakiy’s lack of position in the world: he garners no respect from anyone around him and is rather treated in a peculiar offhand manner throughout the story. “In the department he was shown no respect at all. The caretakers not only did not rise from their places when he passed, but did not even look at him, as if a mere fly had flown through the reception room.”