In the following excerpt, Proffer examines the major critical viewpoints regarding Gogol's short story and suggests that "the real meaning of the story is then that life, even when it shrinks to almost ridiculous proportions, in the end triumphs over death."

Some critics have seen in Akaky Akakievich a humiliated and insulted human being who invokes our pity by his cruel lot and who makes us understand that, despite his insignificance, he is also "our brother." In order to prove their point, these critics cite what is usually called the "humane passage," in which Gogol presents the timid protest of his outraged hero and ponders the profound impression that these words make on a young colleague

Leave me alone, gentlemen. Why do you insult me?— There was a strange note in the words and in the voice in which they were uttered: there was something in...