The Cloak recap

The copying clerk Akaky Akakievich lives so modestly that replacing his ruined cloak requires months of sacrifice. His tailor, Petrovich, makes him a new one, and for a single day the garment brings him warmth and recognition from coworkers who usually mock him. Thieves steal it after an office celebration. The authorities prove ineffective, and an important official humiliates Akaky when he asks for assistance. Akaky returns home ill and dies soon afterward, barely noticed by his department. A figure resembling the dead clerk then roams Saint Petersburg taking other people's coats. When the important person encounters it and surrenders his own cloak, the hauntings attributed to Akaky end and the official becomes more humane toward his subordinates.

Akaky Akakievich is a minor civil servant who takes quiet satisfaction in copying papers while his coworkers treat him as an object of amusement. The Saint Petersburg cold finally penetrates his old cloak, and Petrovich the tailor says its rotten cloth cannot be repaired. Akaky saves with painful discipline until he can buy a new garment. Wearing it changes both his comfort and his standing at the office: colleagues notice him, admire the cloak, and invite him to a gathering. Robbers take it as he walks home from that celebration. His attempts to interest the police achieve nothing. A senior official then frightens and dismisses him for failing to approach through the proper bureaucratic channels. Akaky falls feverishly ill and dies. Soon afterward, a ghostly clerk steals cloaks across the city. It eventually confronts the same official and takes his expensive garment. The official moderates his behavior, and the particular apparition linked to Akaky disappears once it has secured that final coat.

Akaky's fruitless appeal to the important person leaves him shaken; he develops a fever and dies. His office replaces him with scarcely a pause. Thereafter, people report that a clerk's ghost is roaming the city and stripping coats from strangers. The important person, troubled enough by his earlier outburst to ask about Akaky, discovers too late that the clerk is dead. On a nighttime carriage ride, the apparition stops him and claims his costly cloak. The official's fright makes him less inclined to bully junior employees. The small ghost associated with Akaky is not reported again after taking this coat, although a policeman later encounters a much larger spectral thief, preserving doubt about where ordinary crime ends and the ghost story begins.