"Narrative Structure," in Structure, Style and Interpretation in the Russian Short Story, Yale University Press, 1982, pp. 20-36.

In this excerpt, O'Toole examines several structural elements that he finds determining factors in the ultimate theme of the story.

['The Overcoat' is] perhaps the most well-known and elaborately analyzed story in the whole of Russian literature. Many critics, from Belinsky onwards, have taken the theme to be similar to that which can be found on a first reading of Leskov's The Man on Sentry Duty: the plight of the 'little man' in the face of an impersonal and inhumane society prevailing under the autocratic rule of Nicholas I. But if an analysis of the narrative structure ultimately proved this theme inadequate in the case of Leskov's story, in the case of Gogol's it makes such a theme appear a travesty of the story's real essence.

The basic plot of 'The...