The story that happened with Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin begins with a story about his birth and his bizarre naming and goes on to tell about his service as a titular adviser.

Many young officials, laughing, mending documents, showers with papers, pushing him by the arm, and only when he is completely unbearable, he says: “Leave me alone, why do you offend me?” - in a voice declining to pity. Akaky Akakievich, whose service is to rewrite papers, does it with love and, even having come from the presence and hastily slurping his own, takes out a jar of ink and transcribes the papers brought to his house, and if there are none, he deliberately takes a copy from himself any document with an intricate address. There is no amusement, delight of friendship for him, “having written in all his heart, he went to bed,” with a smile anticipating tomorrow’s rewriting.

However, such a dimension of life is violated by an unforeseen incident. One morning, after repeated suggestions made by the frost of St. Petersburg, Akaki Akakievich, having studied his overcoat (so lost its appearance that the department had long called it the hood), notices that it completely shows through on the shoulders and back. He decides to carry her to the tailor Petrovich, whose habits and biography are briefly, but not without detail, set out. Petrovich examines the hood and declares that nothing can be corrected, but that he will have to make a new overcoat. Shaken by the price that Petrovich called, Akaki Akakievich decides that he chose the wrong time and comes when, according to calculations, Petrovich is hungover, and therefore more accommodating. But Petrovich stands his ground. Seeing that it is impossible to do without a new overcoat, Akaki Akakievich seeks out how to get those eighty rubles for which, in his opinion, Petrovich will get down to business. He decides to reduce the "ordinary costs": do not drink tea in the evenings, do not light candles, step on tiptoe so as not to rub out the soles prematurely, give laundry to the laundress less often, and to stay out of bed, stay at home in one bathrobe.

His life changes completely: the dream of an overcoat accompanies him, as a pleasant friend of life. Every month he visits Petrovich to talk about his greatcoat. The expected reward for the holiday, against anticipation, turns out to be big by twenty rubles, and one day Akaki Akakievich and Petrovich go to the shops. And the cloth, and the lap-knee, and the cat on the collar, and the work of Petrovich — all are beyond praise, and, in view of the frost that has begun, Akaki Akakievich once goes to the department in a new overcoat. This event does not go unnoticed, everyone praises the overcoat and requires Akaky Akakievich to set an evening on such an occasion, and only the intervention of a certain official (like an birthday boy) who called everyone for tea saves the embarrassed Akaky Akakievich.

After the day, which was just like a big solemn holiday for him, Akaki Akakievich returned home, dined cheerfully and, having become more humble without work, went to the official in the far part of the city. Again, everyone praises his overcoat, but soon turns to whist, dinner, champagne. Compelled to the same, Akaki Akakievich feels unusual fun, but, mindful of the late hour, he slowly goes home. Initially excited, he even rushes after some lady (“in whom every part of the body was full of extraordinary movement”), but soon the deserted streets stretching inspire him with involuntary fear. In the middle of a huge deserted square some people with a mustache stop him and take off his overcoat.

The misadventures of Akaki Akakievich begin. He does not find help from a private bailiff. In the presence where he comes a day later in his old hood, they pity him and even think of making a crumble, but, having gathered a sheer trifle, they give advice to go to a significant person, which may contribute to a more successful search for an overcoat. The following describes the methods and customs of a significant person who has become significant only recently, and therefore preoccupied, as if to give himself greater significance: "Strictness, severity and - severity," he used to say normally. Wanting to impress his friend, whom he had not seen for many years, he cruelly bake Akaki Akakievich, who, in his opinion, turned to him out of form. Without feeling his legs, he gets home and falls down with a strong fever. A few days of unconsciousness and delirium - and Akaki Akakievich dies, which is only known on the fourth day after the funeral in the department. Soon it becomes known that at night near the Kalinkin bridge a corpse is shown, stripping off everyone’s uniform, not deciphering the rank and title. Someone recognizes in him Akaky Akakievich. Police efforts to capture the dead are lost.

At that time, one significant person who is not alien to compassion, having learned that Bashmachkin died suddenly, remains terribly shocked by this and, to have some fun, goes to a friendly party, from where he is not going home, but to the familiar lady Karolina Ivanovna, and, in the midst of terrible weather, he suddenly feels that someone grabbed his collar. In horror, he recognizes Akaky Akakievich, who triumphantly pulls his overcoat from him. Pale and frightened, a significant person returns home and henceforth does not bother with the severity of his subordinates. The appearance of a dead official has since completely ceased, and the ghost that met a little later on the Kolomenskiy booth was already much taller and wore an enormous mustache.