The overcoat seemed to resemble a depiction of a person's soul. The author goes into detail of the various overcoats, that one would come across when walking throughout the specified town, as if describing the various types of people that would accompany those overcoats. Also, the attachment that the protagonist had developed for his overcoat was not unlike how he would refuse anything new in his life; and with the appearance of the new overcoat came a change in his lifestyle, and he was as accostomed to the coat as he was to the lifestyle. With the loss of both overcoats, his life fades away, as if the loss of the overcoat was cause of that.