The poem, “What Work Is” by Philip Levine is an intricate and thought-provoking selection. Levine uses a slightly confusing method of describing what work actually is. He gives the idea that work is very tedious, however necessary. It is miserable, however, it is a sacrifice that is essentially made by many, if not all able-bodied members of society. Many have to sacrifice going to a concert or a movie, but instead works jobs with hardly a manageable salary. This poem seems to have a focus on members of the lower-class or middle-class who live paycheck to paycheck and are unable to put money away for a future for their children or for a vacation and how difficult life can be made to be while living under this type of circumstance. Levine …show more content…
The diction that the author chooses to use also emphasizes the meaning of the poem. The structure of the poem is one long running stanza, rather than it being broken into multiple stanzas. The poem also does not contain any sort of rhyme scheme either. This could indicate an underlying meaning of what work is and what it is like trying to find work. Especially for people who work full-time at their jobs, it is one long and tiring day working with not much time for fun or creativity. The lack of a rhyme scheme relating to the fact that there is not really any room for pleasure or for being a having a creative mind; it is more geared to indicate that people should clock in, do their job, and clock out. As for diction, the word, “waiting” (lines 2, 6, 18, and 20) is mentioned quite a few times, showing how waiting is also a big part of finding a job or working. There is a lot of waiting involved in finding a job. Waiting for a call back for a job opportunity, or something like waiting until instead of receiving a, “No, we’re not hiring today” (lines 20-21), there is a, “Yes, we have many opportunities available right now.” While being employed, employees wait for their final hour of their shift, waiting for their next promotion, or waiting for their next paycheck, in which they will put all of it to the house and family. This further proves to add to the idea …show more content…
This is an interesting attribute to the poem because generally, poetry and prose are consistent with a sole point of view. The author starts the poem with the word, “We” indicating first person point of view. This helps connect the author with the reader being together in a “long line,” (line 1). This puts the reader with the author, giving them the idea of what it is like to stand and wait, exhausted and “shifting from one foot to another,” (line 7). This makes the reader feel that exhaustion and feel in that moment as well. When Levine uses second person point of view to also bring the reader into the story, so that the reader can experience and feel the same things that the author does. Levine wants the reader to know that work is about waiting, and how “you” are waiting too. It is intended to give the reader a look into how work is about sacrificing a social life and interaction with loved ones to succeed at school, work, and be able to sleep at
Studs Terkel published a nonfiction Working which consists many interviews among different people’s descriptions of their jobs. Through this book, Terkel demonstrates the meaning of work to different people and how their work experiences shape their attitudes about their lives. Among these interviewers, Maggie Holmes is a domestic while Dave Bender is a factory owner. Although their wages are different, Maggie Holmes and Dave Bender’s attitudes about their works are contradictory. People who love their works are passionate and happy about their lives and express less complain than those people who do not like their jobs.
In today’s society you either have to work hard to live a good life, or just inherit a lump sum of cash, which is probably never going to happen. So instead a person has to work a usual nine to five just to put food on the table for their families, and in many cases that is not even enough. In the article, “Why We Work” by Andrew Curry, Curry examines the complexities of work and touches on the reasons why many workers feel unsatisfied with their jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich writes an essay called, “Serving in Florida” which is about the overlooked life of being a server and the struggles of working off low minimum wages. Curry’s standpoint on jobs is that workers are not satisfied, the job takes control of their whole life, and workers spend
The poem describes workers to be “Killing the overtime ‘cause the dream is your life, / Refusing to take holidays or go home to your spouse, / But for many the overtime comes, ‘cause the work is not done. / Deadlines to be met. So you continue to dream like a war vet, / Having flashbacks to make you shiver and scream” (Jones, stanza 7, lines 2-6). Jones reinforces that overworking for an incentive of money does not give one a sense of gratification, and it also distracts them from the values that should matter more to them than anything else. Both Kohn and Jones have a similar approach to showing the reader the effect that overworking can have on a person, and how it will change their values in life, causing unhappiness. Many students go through school dispirited and do not join various clubs and activities for their own enjoyment. A friend of Kohn’s who was also a high school guidance counsellor had a student with ‘…amazing grade and board scores. It remained only to knock out a dazzling essay on his college applications that would clinch the sale. “Why don’t we start with some books that
The repetition of the words “waited” (13), and “watched” (14), throughout the stanzas adds anaphora and mystery to the vivid disapproval surrounding the family. Moreover, the use of repetition deepens the focus on the shame and guilt the young girl and her family are experiencing. The anaphora used throughout the poem intends that there is something being waited for. Therefore, the colonialist settlers are continuously waiting and watching for something to happen. In the last stanza Dumont states, “Or wait until a fight broke out” (55), suggesting that this is the action being waited for. As a result, the negative action causes the family to feel shame and regret. Overall, the use of musicality and anaphora successfully allows the reader to experience the pressure of
“What Work Is” narrates about the brotherly love between the speaker and his brother that seems to be fading away. Almost at the end of Levine’s poem, the speaker asks himself, “How long has it been since [he] told [his brother] / [he] loved him” (Levine 33-34)? This question implies that it has been a long time since the speaker once confessed his love. In other words, as they grow up, the speaker is not able to associate himself to his brother anymore as if he was a stranger because his brother is too busy working. He works an eight-hour night shift at Cadillac, sleeps during the day, and studies German at noon; there is not any time left in his schedule to have a quality time with the speaker. Describing his broth...
Although the narrator did not enjoy the jobs she had, she did not dislike them either. She greatly disliked her job as a telemarketer, selling TV subscriptions over the phone. But like most people, the narrator settled for the jobs to make a living and support herself. In the poem, the narrator states that their favorite job was working at a donut shop. “I liked the donut shop best, 3 AM,/alone in the kitchen, surrounded/ by sugar and squat mounds of dough,” (29-31). From this quote, the reader can infer that the reason the narrator enjoyed this job because she is alone while
The term, work can have several meanings and interpretations. Some people view work as a necessity and a social norm, others might view it with a negative perspective, giving how people are so dependent on it. Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman all have a similar interpretation of work. Your encounters with society affects your actions, yielding a specific outcome. They all acted accordingly to what they observed around them, and the actions hey took was to yield a result of change.
This narrator is sad and burdened by the lack of work and by the lack of people that actually know what work is. “You know what work is----if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you.” (Levine 1036) The narrator is waiting for hours in the rain to be lucky enough to get work, however at some point he knows he may be turned away, “to the wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, “No, we are not hiring today.”” (Levine 1036) The narrator then goes on to also describe the work that relationships require, the one in the poem is between the narrator and his brother. The narrator speaks of a brother that works nights and that he is now disconnected with, he has never said that he loved him, nor kissed his cheek, “You love your brother now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother, who’s not beside you or behind you or ahead of you because he’s home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up by noon to study his German.” (Levine
Currently, human beings are thinking more on the line of they need work in order to make a living. For that reason, work has become meaningless, disagreeable, and unnatural. Many view work as a way to obtain money and not a meaningful human activity that one does for themselves. The author states that there are two reactions of the alienated and profoundly unsatisfactory character of the modern industrial work. One being the ideal of complete laziness and the other, hostility towards work. Fromm believes the reason why people have animosity regarding work is due to their unconscious mind. Subconsciously, a person has “a deep-seated, hostility towards work and all that is connected to it” says Fromm. I believe what Fromm is saying to be true, after all I witness it everyday. Millions of people each day goes to a work which they are dissatisfied with and that can negatively impact their attitude
With this image, the speaker expresses that she wants the readers to experience the literary work. The narrator wants the readers to imagine a water buffalo working hard, then imagining people who work just as hard as the water buffalo. The poet uses this stanza to conveys her messages, ideas and thoughts through. Next, the speaker uses a rhetorical device, metaphor, which is found in stanza two line one: “I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,” (8). The speaker uses metaphor describing people who work hard, to an ox working hard. With this metaphor, it enhances images described by the speaker by making them more creative and interesting. It also makes the story sounds poetic without writing the story in verses. The last r...
The meaning of the first stanza is do the things you need to get done because tomorrow the opportunity may not exist. It states this by saying gather rosebuds while you can because that beautiful flower “tomorrow will be dying” (Herrick 385). The next stanza talks about the Sun’s life from dawn to dusk. By describing it’s race against time it is telling a person that there is not much sunlight so make the most of it To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time and Carpe Diem
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
The poem begins with a first person view. It appears as if the “I” in the first line prepares the reader to step into Weld’s shoes (Grimke). In addition
Although very complex and nearly untranslatable, Böll’s “Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral”, has still gotten one of its English translations done by Hansjörg Bittner. It talks about morality of working, in a half-metaphorical sense.
The working class can work to create the ‘bread’ but at the end of the day they have no right to it, it goes to the upper classes. By including the reader within the poem using ‘We’ there is more of a unity and solidarity within the text. Its like the reader is part of the march. The poem is written in a song structure so it is easily sung or chanted within a march or a meeting of the