Sympathy For The Old Bird

The Old Bird, A Love Story
J.F. Powers creative diction creates a feeling of sympathy for Mr. Newman providing him with scenarios where his knowledge of experience comes in handy, for example, when he makes the information girl smile shows that he knows that he might get a job so he makes sure she likes him to give the greatest chance at getting the job. believe that the story does convey sympathy for Mr. Newman because throughout the story every time he believes somebody is going to act negatively towards him such as the information worker who was his first test of applying for a job. “The girl laughed, making Mr. Newman feel like a regular devil, and handed him the application.” With age comes knowledge and experience , both of which Newman has lots of. aking the ‘friendship’ with the girl at the beginning of this process was important because it made Mr. Newman feel comfortable and gave him confidence that he showed to Mr. Shanahan.

When Newman applied for the a job he was expecting a white collar job, but soon realised that he was not going to get one after talking to Mr Shanahan.

Mr.Shanahan brought out the first signs of nervousness from Newman who tried to be calm and collected. Again, however, we see the story conveying sympathy to Newman because although he does not get the white collar job he expected he was able to start working that day on a new job. “... But can you begin right away?’ it was the final test. ‘Yes i can.” Shanahan sees that Newman wanted a white collar job, but because there is no job yet, and he sees the potential in Mr. Newman he gives him a chance by starting off working with a temporary job. With this job came another bump in Mr. Newman’s road which is a boss that he would need to

befriend.
When Mr. Shanahan showed Newman to his new boss Mr.Hurley. Hurley intimidated Newman at first because he was afraid of the boss not liking him. The story shows sympathy for Newman when the he realises that the boss missed him at lunch and that he was happy to have Mr. Newman be apart of the team. Just this alone made Newman excited to come back to work knowing he had a boss who cared about him in a friendly way not just as a worker.
When Newman gets home we see the reason why he went to get a job in the first place, and that's because of his wife. Mrs. Newman asks all about his day which is good and bad. This reminds Mr. Newman of the generation gap that is at work, but he assures her that working again is something he would love to do. Mrs. Newman is supportive of her husband's work, but made sure this was something that he wanted to do not something that he felt he needed to do. “ But do you like that kind of work, Charley?’ He assured her most earnestly that he did...” Newman, however, did not tell his wife that putting people directly into these kind of jobs was the way the company groomed its employees for office positions.