How does Nikolai Gogol use imagery in The Overcoat?

Gogol uses imagery to illustrate how Akaky has no interest in anything but his work.... he is oblivious to all else.

“Coming home, he would sit down straight away at the table, hastily slurp up his cabbage soup and eat a piece of beef with onions, without ever noticing their taste, and he would eat it all with flies and whatever else God sent him at the time”

“… there was always something stuck to his uniform: a wisp of straw or a bit of thread, moreover, he had a special knack, as he walked in the street, of getting under a window at the precise moment when some sort of trash was being thrown out of it, and, as a result, he was eternally carrying around melon or watermelon rinds and other such rubbish on his hat”