Why No Name?

In class, we discussed the relationship between someone’s name and his or her character/personality. Akaky’s mother contemplates over a myriad of names, most which she deems as queer and dismisses. Eventually, she settles on naming her new baby after his father. From the get-go, it seems as if Akaky was destined for a life in the shadow, being invisible. Gogol devotes a full paragraph to the explanation of how Akaky got his name. Perhaps he means to illustrate that a name is an indication of a person's character.

What I found ironic was that Gogol gives meticulous and sometimes unnecessary details of his characters but does not give us the name of the Very Important Person. He goes through the trouble of informing us that the tailor “was known simply by his Christian name of Grigory, and had been a serf belonging to some gentleman or other; he began calling himself Petrovich only after he had obtained his freedom…” Sure, it is great to know that the tailor used to be called Grigory but that information isn’t all that relevant to the plot. Even Gogol himself says “we really ought not to waste much time over this tailor.”

But shouldn't the Very Important Person, the most powerful man in the story, at least be given a proper name? You would think that since he alone had the power to find Akaky’s overcoat that Gogol would tell us his surname. But perhaps by not naming him, Gogol places importance on the unimportant people in society. He might have wanted those in the upper class to take notice of the hardships and challenges that the civil servants face daily. Or maybe Gogol wanted the Very Important Person to represent the upper class as a whole. Although the Very Important Person is a man of power, we find out through the story that he acts very much like those under him. He pretends to be too preoccupied with work to see Akaky, but in reality, he is enjoying a cigar in his comfortable chair. The fact that no one knows what exactly the Very Important Person’s job is further raises the question of how much power he actually has. Maybe Gogol wants to point out how those in authority aren’t that powerful to begin with. For whatever reason, the absence of the Very Important Person’s name got me thinking.