Summary

The first few pages of Gogol's story are devoted to a detailed description of the main character, a clerk named Arkaky Shoenik. Arkaky, we learn, works in a government office – but the narrator refuses to say which department he works in because he says that government officials are petty and paranoid about things that are written about them. Physically Arkaky is described as a balding middle-aged man with a "pockmarked" face and a "hemorrhoidal" complexion. He is also described as a person who is and will always be in a boring but steady job.

Gogol then tells the reader a funny anecdote about how Arkaky got his name. Gogol explains that Arkaky was named after his father, which made his patronym (a Russian tradition in which men are referred to by both their and their fathers' names) Arkaky Arkakievich, which was...