The stories are pretty straightforward and obvious. Gogol's sense of humor is a bit on the odd side. It's a great introduction to a tradition that Bulgakov picked up on (thus foreshadowing the Master and Margarita book club next month).

On the other hand, these stories don't have a lot of the trademark Gogol incongruities. For example, at the beginning of Dead Souls he talks about "two Russian peasants" and talks about the depiction of two crossed pistols. The immediate response is - "Well, of course they're Russian peasants; the story takes place in Russia. Why does Gogol feel the need to write this?" and then "Funny how, because the pistols aren't real, they can't 'fire in the last act' - Gogol is turning convention upside down."

Similarly, in his early ?????? ?? ?????? ????? ???????? (which I believe is translated "Nights on a Farm Near Dikanka" ), he gives the reader a Ukrainian word-list in the front. However, most of the Ukrainian words used in the stories don't appear in the word-list, and most of the words in the word-list don't appear in the stories. Gogol is just teasing the reader (or linguistically inclined).

While Gogol certainly pokes fun at Russian bureaucracy and officialdom in both of these stories, I don't see the "teasing of the reader" that is present in many of his stories.

The name Akaki Akakievich is funny, to be sure, and makes on think of defecation in Russian as surely as it does in English. He's really been "shit upon" by society and continues to be during the story. At the same time, he evokes sympathy in the reader despite (or perhaps precisely because of) his flaws. Ultimately, "The Overcoat" is a bit sad by Gogol's standards.

As for "The Nose", I just never really got into that story. It's an obvious statement about how people beneath us in the political hierarchy can jump over us and then pretend not to know us. The Freudian analogy may be very apt as well (thought I would posit that it is a subconscious element, rather than an explicit goal of the story).