"I am thy brother."

"But if the joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his hand and prevented his attending to his work, he would exclaim, "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" And there was something strange in the words and the voice in which they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to pity; so much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern by the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akakiy, suddenly stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition that they were well-bred and polite men. Long afterwards, in his gayest moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald forehead, with his heart-rending words, "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded --"I am thy brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and noble."

I chose this excerpt because I didn't really think it fit with the rest of the story. Sure, the narrator frequently went of on seemingly irrelevant tirades, but to me this one was different. The voice seems to morph; the narrator's voice, in my head, changes tone, almost becoming evangelistic. The narrator loses his position as an acquaintance of Akaky, a spectator recalling a story, suddenly becoming all-knowing and describing the experience of another character, an unnamed character. My first reaction to this unnamed character was that perhaps he was a reflection of Gogol himself, in how he reacted to the story that inspired him to write "The Overcoat" in the first place. I thought perhaps Gogol included it to indicate how he might hope his readers will react to this story. Then, I considered that this character might be included as a character foil to the narrator: this coworker is truly empathetic to an extent that he holds his head in his hand and shudders even in his happiest moments, while the narrator spends the story mocking Akaky's every move. Strangely, though the narrator makes so much fun of Akaky, the narrator doesn't tease the coworker at all for sympathizing with Akaky...although I suppose the "O God!" could be read as sarcasm...but I don't think it is. There's something about this passage where I just feel like it's really important and meaningful, and yet I'm not really sure what message I'm supposed to be getting out of it.

Even more jarring is the phrase "I am thy brother." That's gotta mean something. That must be significant to the purpose of this story. I'm just not sure...what to make of it...