The Monotony and Unfulfillment of Work in Contemporary Literature

Contemporary literature deals with a setting and characters involved in a modern timeframe. One dominant factor in modern lifestyles, one which the work of literature should address to be accurately called contemporary, is the 40 hour workweek most people must endure to survive. While some surely enjoy the work they do, plenty of people find their job to be mundane, monotonous and lacking certain opportunities for advancement. It would seem that these dead-end jobs make for much more of an entertaining read, since many contemporary works display characters with disdain and a lack of fulfillment toward their line of work. This disapproval can in many cases be the center of a story's plot and lead the main character toward disastrous actions, actions he/she would not have committed with a favorable job.

Angst in the workplace is not a new plot device by any means. Films, novels, and television shows are frequently centered on a character who hates their job, since following a character who loves their line of work would not be as potentially entertaining as a character who hates theirs. While a character who likes their job would be described or shown as simply working with a smile on their face, someone who hates their job can often deal with their contempt through any number of creative outputs such as sarcasm, practical jokes or any reader's dream (reader being someone with distaste for their work) of telling off their boss. These all make for an entertaining story, however the situation can go astray when the character decides to take violent actions or through their work apathy is put into an unfortunate, possibly life-threatening situation. Any of these scenarios however have the potential to be a more interesting story than one with a character who enjoys their job.

The Diary of a Rapist by Evan S. Connell follows the life of State Unemployment Bureau employee Earl Summerfield, a relatively young married man. Through Earl's journal entries presented throughout the story, we learn of his sporadic hatred toward his wife, what his life outside of work entails and the extreme hatred he has toward his job. A day working at the State Unemployment Bureau entails people out of work asking for money, with many of these requests being accepted by Earl since he is a clerk at the counter. He describes the monotony of his life: "Days, weeks, months. Get up at the same time every morning, put on a suit eight years old with the elbows polished slick as oilcloth, eat poached eggs & read the Chronicle, stand like a totem pole among perfumed stenographers riding the bus downtown, then sit on a stool until 4:45 P.M. Wiggle my toes for amusement. Look down at my shoes to see if the leather's got any new cracks. Try to remember exactly how many times I've pretended to smile at the supervisor" (9). Earl further describes how he has been working as a clerk for years now, with only a recent possibility for advancement.

Earl's job certainly isn't the only reason why he eventually snaps (he later breaks into people's homes and rapes a beauty queen, then ^th entry, after he felt he made an impression with his boss: "Felt much improved today, quite cheerful in fact. My steps were brisk. I was the model civil-service employee marching from desk to filing cabinet and back again" (17). Compare this to an entry a few weeks later where Earl feels he is out of the running for the promotion and suddenly feels his coworkers are speaking ill of him: "Usually I have an impression they talk about me after I leave. They think I'm conceited, perhaps, when just the opposite is the case. It's my expression" (25).

Once he officially loses the promotion to a coworker, all of his negativity seems to fall into place and more disgusting and horrendous actions start to occur. If Earl liked his job in the first place and was not broken down by its monotony, it is arguable that nearly every negative action he took could have been avoided. He could have potentially worked out his problems with Bianca and had seen some good in the world rather than focus on all of the violent actions he had read about or seen. Instead, he let his anger get the best of him and went through with his own violent plan.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline's title story by George Saunders has a similar main character in that they both are apathetic toward their job (the difference between them being the narrator in CivilWarLand is not as aggressive toward his job as Earl Summerfield). The narrator is the owner of the theme park's "go to" guy, a man with seemingly no room for advancement in his work. He sums up his job and his aloofness when a prospective investor comes to investigate the park: "I tell him some men are dreamers and others are doers. He asks which am I and I say let's face it, I'm basically the guy who leads the dreamers up the trail to view the Canal Segment" (3-4). He recognizes his place in the world, and because of that his work ethic diminishes. Much like in Diary of a Rapist the narrator's lack of care toward his job is not the only reason for the story panning out as it does; his shambled family life at home combined with the jaded and dark universe the story takes place in seemingly disillusioned him, however having a more enjoyable job would have been just one less contributing factor toward his unfortunate fate.

His non-commitment to his job leads to the narrator making haphazard decisions, including one major decision which he would sure regret if it did not lead to his death. As his boss was trying to figure out solutions to the gang fights which would occur in his park, the narrator sat by and allowed him to hire a highly unstable man who hid in the woods with a gun. After the climatic event of the story, as the narrator fled into the woods, Sam (the man in question) came out and said "Don't take this too personal... but you've got to go. You know a few things I don't want to broadcast" (26), soon hacking away the main character to cover-up what he had done. In this extreme scenario, if the narrator had more of an influence at work, or was more involved with his job (or simply had a job he enjoyed more than working at a failing theme park) he could have avoided his terrible fate.

During his work he also by a way of not protesting allowed for Sam to kill a boy who stole candy from a store in the theme park, among other things. He meets with the ghost of the boy toward the end, who in reference to Sam said: "I steal four jawbreakers and a Slim Jim and your friend kills and mutilates me?' ...'He wasn't my friend,' I say. 'He wasn't your enemy" (25). By realizing how unfulfilling his job was his temperament ended up changing him, into someone who did not protest against Sam when he had the chance. This all could have been avoided if the narrator simply enjoyed his job; surely someone who liked their work would speak out against someone who could potentially jeopardize it (much like what Sam does).

To a lesser extent compared with the other two novels, Don DeLillo's White Noise includes a main character who is dissatisfied with his work. Many factors in narrator Jack Gladney's life create a "white noise" to his senses, meaning there is so much sensory clutter in his world that it is easy for him to fade in and out of necessity. He works as a professor of Hitler studies, a department he founded, at a small college. He realizes the relative unimportance a degree in Hitler studies entails, and this adds to the overall effect of having an unfulfilling job. This sentiment is shown during the showing of a Hitler movie at the beginning of the semester, along with the fact that he only teaches a single class a semester. This feeling is also apparent when it is revealed that Jack does not know how to speak German, a language seemingly necessary when teaching something as enriched in German culture and history as Hitler studies. Later in the novel he attempts to learn the language by taking private lessons in his off-time. Jack does not try to learn German for the sake of become more fluent in his line of work, instead he simply wants to be seen as competent to his co-workers in the field when a Hitler studies conference is called into order. For this reason he realizes he has a phony character, evident in this passage in Chapter 8: "I had long tried to conceal the fact that I did not know German. I could not speak or read it, could not understand the spoken word or being to put the simplest sentence on paper... No one could major in Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill without a minimum of one year of German. I was living, in short, on the edge of a landscape of vast shame" (31).

The importance of Jack's job teeters off as the novel progresses, ultimately not having a significant effect on the plot involving the "Airborne Toxic Event" and his Nyodene D, but it is still an important factor in defining Jack's character. If Jack truly wanted to become more involved with his line of work, he surely would have learned to speak German by now and he would have taught more than one course a semester. In doing these things, it is safe to say that Jack would have found much more fulfillment with his job.

A tedious, monotonous job deeply affects characters in contemporary literature, since many readers today are stuck in jobs much like the characters involved in these stories. While people in today's society ultimately do not have as strong a story as the characters in literature, this line of unfulfilling work often leads toward strong story elements and defining attributes for its characters. It is a capable, relatable literary element which is receiving more attention from contemporary authors, and in return is allowing for more enriching stories to be woven.

Sources:

White Noise, Don DeLillo

The Diary of a Rapist, Evan S. Connell

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders