Analysis Of Orientation By Daniel Orozco

The new employee is unimportant in Daniel Orozco’s “Orientation”
The short story “Orientation” by Daniel Orozco is a unique story. Orozco never introduces the narrator or the audience. The story appears to be, just as the title specifies, an orientation for a person entering a new job. The story, however, delves deep into the lives of several employees throughout the story. The lives of these employees and their interactions become the most important part of Orozco’s work and the main character that is being spoken to becomes an unimportant observer in an intricate atmosphere.
The story is told in the first person voice. The narrator is talking to one particular person; He refers to this character in the second person voice. “This is your

It is implied that dialogue exists. “That was a good question. Feel free to ask questions.” The narrator has acknowledged that the listener has asked a question. The reader never actually sees the question that the listener asks, though. Instead, the narrator rephrases the listener’s question and repeats it back to him. By having the narrator do this, Orozco makes the listener less important. His/her dialogue is not even important enough to include in the text and must be repeated by the narrator in order to be included in the story. However, contradictory to the listener’s seemed unimportance, the narrator urges the listener to ask more questions. The specific job that the listener is being oriented to is not important to the story, either. The setting is a generic office atmosphere. “These are the offices and these are the cubicles.” By using this stereotypical and conventional setting, Orozco makes the things that happen to individual employees even more outrageous. The outrageous events create a contrasting tone. The typical office orientation situation is invaded by shocking situations such as Amanda Pierce’s. Pierce’s husband “subjects her to an escalating array of painful and humiliating sex games.” Describing very personal aspects of an employee’s life creates a very uncomfortable feeling in this situation. This type of information is not supposed to be talked about in an office

Kevin Howard does not let any of this interfere with his work. He is, in fact, our fastest typist.
The disturbing description of the serial killer is recited without any waver whatsoever away from the intent only to divulge information. The narrator makes no personal comment and expresses no opinion about Howard. After the narrator has given the information to the listener, the narrator leads the train of thought right back to the work environment. The idea of a horrible mass murderer is interrupted by his typing ability. This continued contrast now goes past unstable and borders on psychotic. The far-fetched is made believable only because of the narrator’s complete professional façade. By itself, speaking of a mass murderer’s typing ability does seem psychotic, but the narrator has so completely described every aspect of the listener’s new surroundings that any individual part of the surrounding does not seem overly important. The characters are merely present and described as they are. This description does not affect any character, so there is no real action to be deemed unusual, unstable, or