Society has long been plagued by discrepancies between between the social classes due to lack of mutual understanding. Yuri Herrera’s “The Objects,” a dystopian short story, uses a rat and a louse, the narrator and rafa, to reveal underlying misunderstandings among the social classes. “The Objects” is an allegory which attempts to connect animalistic instincts to the potentially immoral competition among working classes as they climb the corporate ladder.
The narrator’s description of his workplace provides insight as to how the workers are separated into different classes. For instance, the building is divided into levels and these levels contain workers whose transformations resemble the ascending order of the food chain. The narrator states that, “We already know that those right above us are transformed into cats and dogs. I imagine those who are all the way at the top are transformed into lions or elephants. Or sharks.”(53). It seems that the characters are only familiar with the level directly above them most likely because they never needed to.. Also each level contains a group of animals with similar positions with a rat and louse on the first level, and cats and dogs on the second. The order in …show more content…
Herrera is able to convey the animalistic tendencies of competition with no morals through the workers having a literal animal half of their personality. He also uses different types of animal at different levels to indicate the dependence the workers have developed on each other as they climb the ladder and the difference in solidarity from the top to the bottom. This is a representation of how the lower classes, whose values are based on kinship, view the upper classes, who value interdependence, and their misunderstandings about each other. Neither is inherently wrong but rather different and therefore difficult to
The narrator’s description of his workplace provides insight as to how the workers are separated into different classes. For instance, the building is divided into levels and these levels contain workers whose transformations resemble the ascending order of the food chain. The narrator states that, “We already know that those right above us are transformed into cats and dogs. I imagine those who are all the way at the top are transformed into lions or elephants. Or sharks.”(53). It seems that the characters are only familiar with the level directly above them most likely because they never needed to.. Also each level contains a group of animals with similar positions with a rat and louse on the first level, and cats and dogs on the second. The order in …show more content…
Herrera is able to convey the animalistic tendencies of competition with no morals through the workers having a literal animal half of their personality. He also uses different types of animal at different levels to indicate the dependence the workers have developed on each other as they climb the ladder and the difference in solidarity from the top to the bottom. This is a representation of how the lower classes, whose values are based on kinship, view the upper classes, who value interdependence, and their misunderstandings about each other. Neither is inherently wrong but rather different and therefore difficult to