Imagery And Tone In The Company Man By Ellen Goodman

Stephen R. Covey said, “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” In today’s society, many people put work and career pursuits at the top of their metaphorical list of priorities. In a world driven a million miles an hour by commercial success, it is a wonder anyone has time to “stop and smell the roses” with the people they care about. In “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pockets”, Jack Finney expresses the importance of enjoying life rather than chasing fruitless ambition through extensive symbolism and a touch of satire.

Their money and power made many feel invincible, superior to the middle and lower class workers. Without the use of reason or compassion, they took more and more to maintain their perpetual high. Similarly, A Pair of Silk Stockings’s protagonist Mrs. Sommers experienced this phenomenon during her day of extravagance. The freedom of having fifteen dollars gave her a feeling of importance, a sense of power, which she uses to indulge herself, not thinking about her family. She made purchases without consequence and built herself up to create the illusion of importance, and a sense of belonging with members of the upper class.

What it did mention though – his “survivors” – served to arouse pity and mourning for his death. However, their statements only ironically reinforce Phil’s meaningless. His “ ‘dearly beloved’ eldest of the ‘dearly beloved’ ” child researched about his father the day before the funeral in a frantic and futile attempt to get to know him. Phil’s youngest child, his favorite, once said that “my father and I only board here,” distancing Phil away from him. Nobody, not even his children, cares about Phil, even on his deathbed. The final nail in the coffin is when his wife fails to “look [the company’s president] into the eye” and honors her husband’s death. Instead, she values preserving her relationship with the company president who will “straighten out the finances – the stock options and all that.” Phil leaves behind no legacy. His life, full of numbers, devoid of meaning, is just like every “company man” - and just like every “company man,” he will be

The father’s way of dealing with his inner issues is reflected by the way he distracts himself with hobbies of the women he loves. This illustrates how a sudden tragedy can influence someone’s lifestyle. In fact, before his first wife passed away he showed a lot of interest in art and when she died he was lost and devastated ,” (…) after mom died, my sister and I used to worry about his living alone. And he was lonely.We knew that after putting in his usual twelve-hours workday, he would return to the empty house (...) then read medical journals until it was time to go to sleep.”(16). This implies that

Diction and syntax play more prominent roles in the formation of the piece, but the satirical references add interest and further advance Goodman’s conveyal of her feelings. The Onion, a humorous newspaper, uses satire to make fun of society humorously and ironically. Goodman uses this same technique to mock the harshness of the workforce and poke fun at Phil’s “perfect Type A” life. This straightforward article makes fun of fake obituaries and the typical businessman’s lifestyle. Goodman makes it very apparent that Phil lived the life of a typical businessman. She cleverly mocks his relationship with his family, calling them “dearly beloved,” likely taking that form his obituary, then continuing to explain the distance between himself and his family members. His “dearly beloved” children either say “had nothing to say” to him or asked others for clues on their father’s life. Goodman includes another line of satire in the seventh paragraph. A colleague of Phil gave his regards to Phil’s wife, Helen, saying “I know how much you will miss him.” She answered, “I already have.” Phil was likely “dead” to the family long before his actual death from coronary thrombosis. What did he have to live for besides his uber-important job and the family he barely knew? Maybe the “egg salad sandwiches at his desk” and “monthly game of golf helped him survive his workaholic lifestyle a little longer than seemed

The piece “The Company Man” by Ellen Goodman employs many rhetoric techniques commonly used by writers today. The story revolves around Phil; a recently deceased businessman who many claim “worked himself to death”. Ellen Goodman attempts to make a statement about business men and their devotion to only their job with no true emotions. Goodman utilizes her rhetoric techniques to convey her opinion on the death of the protagonist Phil.

The irony of Mrs. Mallard’s response to the news of her husband’s death lies in the fact that her reaction did not constitute what a common reaction to death entails: extreme disbelief, prolonged heartache, and violent hysterics. When her sister Josephine breaks the news to Mrs.

In mocking the organization of a real eulogy, the publisher illustrates her negative attitude towards the death of the working man and the lack of remorse for his departure. The flow of thought in the composition reveals an impersonal tone, allowing characters to remain unimportant and nameless, which is in a satirical contrast to the true sense of loss usually presented by obituaries. Her structure mirrors the corporate mindset that every individual has an ‘expiration date’ - identifying the characters by their age - the “fifty-one-year-old deceased”, the“forty-eight-year-old widow”, and the “sixty-year-old company president” (Goodman line 32). This organization of the characters through numbers showcases the labor addict’s lack of importance to his company - bringing up a major societal problem within corporate America that only sees its workers as statistics. Goodman pokes fun at the sense of fondness and loss created by eulogies in order to reveal the insignificance of the man’s life to the business world - who care more about profits than the lives of their employees.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Mr.Peeble’s Heart” Gilman challenges stereotypes regarding gender and shows the reader that men can suffer from symptoms of depression, neurasthenia, or hysteria similar to a woman but are often ignored by society due to expectations that men should be unbreakable and focus on their duties and responsibilities. Men are also portrayed and expected to be “Macho” at all times but they too can be fragile. In the story, Mr. Peebles had to carry out duties that men were expected to performed in which he was in charge of running a store, taking care of his wife and kids, and in his younger days taking care of his sick mother. During this time he had to give up his dreams and passions in life along with health which

Acting with little real feeling Anse stands over his dead wife. Darl describes Anse’s response to his wife’s death; “Pa stands over the bed, dangle-armed, humped, motionless. He raises his hand to his head, scouring his hair, listening to the saw. He comes nearer and rubs his hand, palm and back, on his thigh and lays it on her face and then on the hump of the quilt where her hands are. He touches the quilt as he saw Dewey Dell do, trying to smooth it up to the chin, but disarranging it instead. He tries to smoothe it again, clumsily, his hand awkward as a claw, smoothing at the wrinkles which he made and which continue to emerge 2 beneath his hand with perverse ubiquity, so that at last he detests, his hand falling to his side and stroking itself again, palm and back, on his thigh. The sound of the saw snores steadily into the room. Pa breathes with a quiet, rasping sound, mouthing the snuff against his gums. “God’s will be done,” he says. “Now I can get them teeth”

It is said that right before someone dies, they see their life flash before their eyes. They are said to see the things most dear to them. However, no one on their deathbed regrets the amount of money that they have. In the moment of clarity, most realize that a number on a paycheck is not as important as emotional and mental possessions. People always tell each other that money can not buy happiness, yet most end up spending every waking moment thinking about money. Why do people waste their time and energy pursuing something that is not what they truly need? Often, they use social class to fill a void in their lives that can not be filled by materialistic possessions. Many people realize this, but it is often too late. Charles Dickens demonstrates the effects of social climbing in his novel, Great Expectations. This novel explores the connections and effects of human nature and society, which are the two most powerful forces that guide people’s decisions. Some may say that social climbing is good, but as will be proven, pursuing social class for the wrong reason can result in disastrous consequences. The motivation to obtain higher social status leaves those who pursue it dissatisfied with reality and with a wider void in their lives as shown by Pip, Estella, and Magwitch.

Phil is a husband with three kids who recently died, “...finally and precisely, at 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning.” Ellen Goodman, the author, portrays Phil in a negative light. In, “The Company Man,” Goodman uses repetition and descriptive diction to convey Phil (the focus of the piece) as a distant, work-oriented husband. To start, Goodman uses repetition to convey Phil as a distant person.

She uses repetition of various phrases to build a strong logical argument that Phil’s life was entirely controlled by his work. Goodman repeats that Phil died “precisely at 3:00pm”, implying that that one detail is the most notable thing about him, and she repeats his “type A” personality, signifying that regardless of character, workaholic lifestyles consume one’s life and drain one of character. These repetitive details convey a strong argument that Phil’s life was empty, and evokes empathy and pity from the audience at Phil’s

With the new digital age being introduced, it meant that job wages were going down while uncertainties about employment stability and opportunities were going up (136). An example that Sender uses to reinforce the connection between the straight men becoming better citizens and the flexible capitalism is when Ted, one of the Fab Five experts on the show, teaches one of the candidates how to select wine and recommend dishes based on a professional standpoint (145). The reason that this connects to flexible capitalism is because success in the business industry nowadays depends less on skills related directly to the job and more on how one has created a work ethic that relates to self-presentation (145). When Sender is discussing the connection between becoming a better self monitoring citizen and inadequate consumption she is referring to how the candidates often come up short when it comes to categories such as domestic and romantic tasks (140). In one of the episodes, the focus is put upon trying to turn a candidate into a person with “romantic marketability”

In the psychological lens, the brain is separated into three different parts. The three parts are the superego, the ego, and the id. The superego is the way society expects you to react to different problems and situations. The ego is the conscious decisions that you make. The id is your unconscious desires.