Compare and contrast Gogol's "The Overcoat" with William Blake's poems. How is the afterlife important to both authors? What else do their works have common? Are their messages the same or different? Discuss their tones, language, styles, and themes.

Gogol’s story contrasts with Blake‘s poetry in many ways. The appearance of Akaky as a ghost at the end of the story is a product of Gogol’s satire, and Gogol’s notion of the “afterlife” is less spiritual than it is a device his story uses to level social classes. In death, the clerk becomes a kind of avenging spirit, stealing the overcoats of others until, finally, he is able to steal the coat of the “person of consequence” who refused to help him in life. Thus avenged, the spirit of the clerk apparently disappears.
Blake’s notion of the afterlife, and his visions of angels and demons, are more overtly religious than anything in Gogol's story. However, both writers viewed the afterlife as a kind of balance; for Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, evil is not something that must be defeated by good, but rather part of a kind of divine or moral calculation, in which each is necessary for the existence of the other. There is a similar sense of justice in Gogol’s story, in which the powerlessness of the clerk in life is balanced by his power to steal overcoats from anyone, rich or poor, in death.