Richard Rodriguez’s “The Workers” follows Rodriguez experience he encounters while working a summer job. Rodriguez, the narrator, receives a construction job during the summer of his senior year in college through a friend. At first the narrator is excited to be provided a menial job and have a chance to show his parents he can handle “real work.” However, throughout the story, the narrator is seen coming of age as he realizes that there’s more to the job. To begin with, the narrator happily took the job knowing that having a construction job will make his parents proud. “I would tell my father only after the summer was over, when I could announce after all, I did know what “real work” is like.” (Rodriguez 103) At the start of the story, the narrator begins to realize the diversity within the group of workers. “Carefully completing their work sheet; talking about the fortunes of local football teams; planning Las Vegas vacations; comparing the gas mileage of various makes of campers—they were not los probres my mother had spoken about.” (Rodriguez 104) Thinking that only los probres or the poor, worked menial jobs, the narrator soon realized that what his mother …show more content…
“I stress the point because I know people would label me “disadvantaged” because of my color. They make the same mistake I made as a boy, when I thought disadvantaged life was circumscribed by particular occupations.” (Rodriguez 107) The narrator begins to notice the judgment done when he was younger and realizes his errors. The narrator also realizes that having a construction job wasn’t going to prove he knew what “real work” was by having to do hard labor. “In the end, my father was right—though perhaps he did not know how right or why—to say that I would never know what real work is.” (Rodriguez 107) From the working the construction job the narrator became more considerate and knowledgeable which can be seen near the end of the
The characters in this play worked for the Olstead company for generations. Consequently, this physical environment became a major element in their day to day lives. Working for Olstead was critical because of the positive reputation and high wages. Stan, an older main character expresses this in the following quote, "Not many people walk away from Olstead's, cuz you're not gonna find better money out there. You leave, it'll be impossible to get back in. They'll be ten guys lining up for your fucking job" (Nottage, 31). The workers heavily depended on the job, which drilled that idea into their moral environment. Unfortunately for them: "American think tanks report that the booming stock market is widening the income gap between the poorest and richest U.S. families." (Nottage, 13). The company desires more profits, so even though characters dedicated their whole lives to the company, speculation about lay offs began. Tracey, a worker at the company, displays a 'hiring' flier written in Spanish to her fellow coworkers. In this scene, a Colombian man named Oscar translates the flier to them. Little do they know, Oscar will later on work for the company after everyone else is fired and accept a lower wage than the frequent
In this case, talent can be and is represented by what you have been given and or your socioeconomic status, and if you don’t work hard, someone else who works hard should be given opportunities regardless of their “talent” or lack thereof. The Socs have been handed a lot and were born into the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum and choose not to work hard. Darry, on the other hand, wasn’t handed a lot and was born on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, but he chose to work hard so he should have gotten a chance at a future. However, society judges promise on wealth and “talent”, neither of which Darry has. Darry works as a roofer, causing injury to himself, to ensure his own and his family’s survival. But as a Greaser, nothing he does matters, or even deserves to matter. He worked hard in school earning him a scholarship. Even more so, he balanced getting those good grades with being on the school football team. His hardwork and his balance between athletics and academia earned him a scholarship. But even with his scholarship, he couldn’t afford college. But, he didn’t give up. Then, in a fatal car crash, his parents die, removing any chance of him being able to go to college for at the very least the near future or more likely, the rest of his life. But that wasn't all. With his parents no longer around, he had to care for his
Firstly, John Steinbeck represents the lives of migrant workers in his novel, ‘Of Mice and Men’. The lives of migrant workers were hard, challenging and unrewarding. Migrant workers suffered from poverty because they were low-wage workers performing manual labour in the agricultural field. They were forced to travel between American states in search of seasonal work .In the novel, John Steinbeck shows the harsh realit...
The novel is an exposé of the harsh and vicious reality of the American Dream'. George and Lennie are poor homeless migrant workers doomed to a life of wandering and toil. They will be abused and exploited; they are in fact a model for all the marginalized poor of the world. Injustice has become so much of their world that they rarely mention it. It is part of their psyche. They do not expect to be treated any different no matter where they go.
the setting of the novel is in the 1930’s in the midst of the great depression where money and work was hard to come by. Most people turned to manual labor since is always needed somewhere, but it never payed well.
This agency creates a complex self-realization that readers find in both of the characters, however both shows different approach that differentiate their character from one another. As a result, both characters manifest a sense of victimization, but somehow in their hope for upward mobility, negate that. The power of this purpose is retrospective to all migrant workers because that is all they have---it’s rather success or failure.
In the Child Labor in the Carolinas, photos and depictions of children working in mills show how working class children did not have the opportunities to branch out and have a childhood as defined by today’s standards. Though the pamphlet creators may have been fighting for better standards for child labor in textile mills of the Carolinas, they simultaneously show how working class families depended on multiple members to support the family: in “Chester, South Carolina, an overseer told me frankly that manufacturers [in] all the South evaded the child labor law by letting youngsters who are under age help older brothers and sisters” (McElway, 11). Children were used because they were inexpensive labor and were taken advantage of in many ways because they were so...
Labor and Legality by Ruth Gomberg-Munoz is an intense ethnography about the Lions, undocumented immigrants working in a Chicago restaurant as busboys. The ten undocumented men focused on in Gomberg-Munoz’s are from Leon, Mexico. Since they are from Leon, they are nicknamed the Lions in English. She describes why they are here. This includes explaining how they are here to make a better future for their family, if not only financially, but every other way possible. Also, Gomberg-Munoz focuses on how Americans see “illegal aliens”, and how the Lions generate social strategies, become financially stable, stay mentally healthy, and keep their self-esteem or even make it better. Gomberg-Munoz includes a little bit of history and background on “illegal”
John Steinbeck does not portray migrant farm worker life accurately in Of Mice and Men. Housing, daily wages, and social interaction were very different in reality. This paper will demonstrate those differences by comparing the fictional work of Steinbeck to his non-fictional account of the time, The Harvest Gypsies.
Esperanza, a Chicano with three sisters and one brother, has had a dream of having her own things since she was ten years old. She lived in a one story flat that Esperanza thought was finally a "real house". Esperanza’s family was poor. Her father barely made enough money to make ends meet. Her mother, a homemaker, had no formal education because she had lacked the courage to rise above the shame of her poverty, and her escape was to quit school. Esperanza felt that she had the desire and courage to invent what she would become.
In Catherine Rampell’s article, “A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much,” the idea of the younger generation, known as Generation Y or Millennials thought of as lackadaisical and indolent by older generations has been quashed by Rampell’s explanations of the differing behaviors and ideas held by these two generations, causing a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of productivity. The era of computers has especially been a major cause of such a rift, specifically the dependence on technology of which has contributed to the growth of synergistic and collaborative dispositions amongst the younger generations- behaviors once thought of as ineffectual in the workplace.
The story is told through the eyes of seven year old Luke Chandler. Luke lives with his parents and grandparents on their rented farmland in the lowlands of Arkansas. It takes place during the harvest season for cotton in 1952. Like other cotton growers, these were hard times for the Chandlers. Their simple lives reached their zenith each year with the task of picking cotton. It’s more than any family can complete by themselves. In order to harvest the crops and get paid, the Chandlers must find cotton pickers to help get the crops to the cotton gin. In order to persevere, they must depend on others. They find two sets of migrant farm workers to assist them with their efforts: the Mexicans, and the Spruills - a family from the Arkansas hills that pick cotton for others each year. In reading the book, the reader learns quickly that l...
...ture, “we must first begin by understand[ing] the complex but deeply valued meaning of work and place that formed the backdrop against which deindustrialization was staged” (67). With Linkon and Russo’s emphasis on Youngstown’s representations of social and class conflict it becomes apparent that anyone who grew up in a town that based its identity on labor could relate. The problem is not in the past it is in the future. With a better understanding of the struggle of work and place, the youth of today can help mend Youngstown’s identity by building upon the gap on working class solidarity that was created not so long ago. The connection then would be “the struggle for meaning in Youngstown would not end with the closing of the mills” however it will end when the people no long believe in themselves” (130). That is when the connection is lost between work and place.
The economic status of the main characters is poor, without hope of improving their condition, and at the mercy of a quasi-feudal system in North America during the late 1800's. Being a sharecropper, Ab and his family had to share half or two-thirds of the harvest with the landowner and out of their share pay for the necessities of life. As a result of this status, Ab and his family know from the start what the future will hold -- hard work for their landlord and mere survival for them.
It is fascinating how far the world has transformed in the past 300 years. The world has evolved in the way labor is accomplished. The innovation of machines, abolishment of slavery and child labor laws have all played a part in this history. 300 years ago, slaves were the main force of labor because they were cheap. Economically, the next major force of labor was the children. Since children were smaller, they were able to do jobs that adults could not, such as sweep chimneys. This was a terrible job for children to be doing. William Blake writes about how miserable the kids were in two poems, “The Chimney Sweeper” (Songs of Innocence), and “The Chimney Sweeper” (Songs of Experience.) In both poems the kids were not happy with the situation they were in because of the harsh conditions. Child labor is extremely harmful to children, and Blake realized how dangerous it was. He criticizes the King, the Church, and the parents for their contribution to a child’s misery. It is evident that parents would force