'Young Woman In Sophie Treadwell's Machinal'

Improved Essays
The play Machinal by Sophie Treadwell creates a world that Young Woman feels trapped in by the mundane, thoughtless routine, repeated every day. Much like the machines that they work with, most of the characters around Young Woman perform a certain set of tasks and never stray from them. Young Woman is yearning for something different, a feeling of life that is not mechanical, instead something human, even though she is not entirely sure what that entails. As her life moves on, however, she becomes even more entrenched in the conveyer belt life that she desperately wanted to avoid. As a result of her constant dissatisfaction with her life, and without anyone around her able to understand, she becomes isolated, cornered by her discontent. Young …show more content…
Here, the environment is heavily mechanical, including the language used by her coworkers. They give the first description of Young Woman, before she arrives. Their discussion of her turns to her ability as an employee, much of which is negative; the stenographer defends his position against her because he claims “I'm efficient. She is inefficient” (3). The concept of efficiency, while not rooted in a machine, became quickly attached to it as a way to express output, as they were meant to increase productivity in less time. In order to be considered efficient, to the stenographer, as well as to wider society, means to complete as much work as possible in the smallest amount of time. Efficiency can be considered mindless, much like the machines around Young Woman and her coworkers. There is no consideration to humanity. Rather, it becomes solely about outcomes and numbers. Since Young Woman does not produce outputs to the same standard, she is not considered a good employee. Judgement of her is based solely on how well she imitates the machines with which she is working. Who she is as a person is not important; there is no emotional reasoning or connection with her and the work she performs. The other workers only care that she can be another cog in the employer’s wheel, just like them. However, since she does not fit into that model, she is an anomaly in the workplace. When Young Woman finally makes her appearance, the other co-workers turn to her, and simultaneously say “you’re late” (5). It is as though they are one in that moment, all turning to the one that stands out. She does not adhere to the routine, which cannot be tolerated. The moment she is with people, she does not find comfort or camaraderie. Instead, Young Woman is isolated even when in a room with multiple people. She is singled out by everyone else; her missteps open for the workers to comment upon. This magnification on her is

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Nickel And Dimed Emergency

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages

    This is a mantra of her manager while working for the Maids. He says, “Now if I get a migraine I just pop two Excedrins and get on with my life. That’s what you have to do- work through it” (87). When Holly, one of the Ehrenreich’s coworkers at the Maids, hurts her ankle on the job, she insists on staying to finish because she already missed so many days of work in the last few weeks. The fear of losing a source of income keeps workers working under poor conditions.…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In David Shiplers The Working Poor: Invisible in America he starts off by stating how often the American lower class citizens are ripped off and treated poorly in modern American business, due in part to their ignorance of labor laws or their spending habits. Chapter two talks mostly in part about the hardest working jobs end up giving the least back to the worker. The most dangerous jobs have the lowest pay and the least benefits, especially when talking about the workers family there is virtually no healthcare benefits in some low wage jobs. These jobs are also time consuming and the workers family doesn’t get half the attention that they need from a parent or loved one. Chapter three talks about how the binding jell of the American economy is the immigrant, legal and illegal.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    Laughter Out of Place by Donna M. Goldstein is an anthropology of Brazil involving race, class, violence and sexuality in a Rio shantytown. Goldstein spent over a decade studying the culture and specifically a domestic worker named Gloria who raised fourteen children some of whom are hers biologically and others she picked up from the streets or family members whose parents had died. Goldstein uses Gloria and her family’s first hand accounts to reveal the overall state and challenges of life Goldstein observed while researching her anthropology. Most Brazilians and historians agree that Brazil is a racial democracy. Goldstein argues through her anthropology using her personal observations, first hand accounts, and historical facts…

    • 1846 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She struggles to establish her own identity because…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lastly, she used logos throughout her writing. Logos appeal logic to the audience and focus on the facts. Ehrenreich explains experiences she went through while working in the lower class and provides facts for the audience on what she went through. Throughout her writing, she is persuading her audience to not have a of a low paying job for their entire life because it can be so much better if you go to college and get a real job.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dunkin Donuts It started with Dunkin Donut, an organization that Rachel Doucet worked for, and she said, “It really is a circus at times”. I interviewed Rachel Doucet who happens to works at Dunkin Donuts and I will do a critical analysis on the metaphors that she mentioned about Dunkin Donuts as an organization. It is based on a fast-food industry as an organization and how the people work as well interact in the workforce. I did a fifteen minutes interview and analyzed on the metaphors Rachel described about Dunkin Donuts. My reaction to the metaphors Rachel described was a bit shocking because I did not expect Dunkin Donuts to be crazier than I realize.…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Even at this stage of her study she discovers that working in these conditions are rough but as her journey develops even more a rapid change can be noted and she is left with the scarring of an acerbic attitude towards this enduring lifestyle. Ehrenreich's experiment served as a wake up call and allowed for her to realize and understand the adversity of working a job with little meaning. Unfortunately people face this bitter truth everyday when they work jobs like the restaurant jobs Ehrenreich took on. They have become stuck in a monotonous cycle of suffering with work only to receive a skimpy paycheck and their creativity is inevitably…

    • 1298 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Allison Pugh’s the Tumbleweed Society, the book offers insight into the cultural deprivation and insecurities within the lives of individuals and the workplace society. Using eighty individual interviews, Pugh offers exploration in the lives of people from different social class standings as well as gender and racial segregation pertaining to the work force. Noting specifically the feeling of severe job insecurity and the fact that most believe that job insecurity is purely inevitable. Along with job insecurity Pugh focuses on how people cope with flexibility in the workplace and discusses the hardships of how the fast paced and technological advancements have interfiered within the intimate lives of families.…

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ehrenreich utilizes exemplum to emphasize the harrowing living and working conditions of workers in the service industry by providing examples of the lives of her fellow employees. In using enumeratio and metaphor, Ehrenreich is conveying the gruesome details of the workplace environment for most service workers. With her use of procatalepsis, Ehrenreich refutes the idea that the poor have come up with some “secret way” to live simply without sacrificing anything major.…

    • 1268 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1-Throughout the essay, Ehrenreich and Fuentes utilize a descriptive writing style that captures the reader 's attention in several ways. 2-First, "Life on the Global Assembly Line" opens with the attention-grabbing sentence, "Every morning, between four and seven, thousands of women head out for the day shift" (159). 3-This opening line entices the reader to learn more about the circumstances of these women. 4-For instance, who are they, where are they going, and what is their story? 5-Second, throughout the article, Ehrenreich and Fuentes ' words create a visual image of the horrendous working conditions the women face daily.…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It might seem that the metaphor of the machine in the novel is Kesey’s way of explaining how American society works. Admittedly, it is possible to think that Kesey is not criticizing the American system, with his comparison of it to a machine, but instead simply saying that it is an efficient capitalistic country. However, it is difficult to maintain this argument especially since Kesey demonstrates that the patients on the ward would rather not be a part of the Combine. The Combine is not efficient if some of the parts don’t work e.g. (the patients). Therefore, Kesey is not being complimentary but instead being critical of the of the…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In doing so, she instills an image in her listeners’ minds of children no more than four feet tall. Also, she describes “the deafening noise of the spindles” to the audience to plant a spine-chilling feel for the work conditions children must endure (line 20). Additionally, Kelley mentions that a girl just turning thirteen leaves for work “carrying her pail of midnight luncheon as happier people carry their midday luncheon” (50-51) to show the differences in working during the day versus all night. Stating that “happier” people work during the day instills an image of depressed young children heading off to work all night long. Kelley describes how these young children “carry bundles of garments from factories to the tenements” (75-76); by doing so, she is trying to instill the picture of girls six and seven years of age knocking on doors with bundles of clothes unlike the free children who would normally skip from door to door selling Girl Scout…

    • 1114 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    At first two days, she expresses her great release and sense of accomplishment, considering herself as “powerfully vindicated”, as “a survivor”, because of the colleagues’ “greeting” for the rare persistence for new workers on this job in the second day. (Ehrenreich, 395) Ehrenreich confirmed her difficulties of waitress job for her first day experience, trigging her the exaggerating effect on her emotion, express in the form of analogy to the “survivor” for the similar valuable brave spirit. (395) However, latter, Ehrenreich complain her job context of encountering costumers, with a shifting attitude, stating them in short for “enemy”. She numerated the “traditional asshole type”, including the “frat boys” and “Visible Christians”.…

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Daniel Orozco’s “Orientation” Critiques the Modern Workplace Most people at some point in their life will begin a new job and immediately feel overwhelmed by trying to memorize new responsibilities, new expectations, and new names. “Orientation” is Orozco’s satirical take on the modern workplace, which narrates an employee’s bizarre experience with a training session on the first day of a new job. In addition to minimal instructions and procedures, the new employee is given a brief history of the social crimes committed in the workplace, ranging from intentionally using the wrong bathroom to serial murder. With humor and imaginative visuals, Orozco criticizes the typical workplace’s emphasis on gossip and office relationships over the quality…

    • 1191 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Reign of the Feminist “True equality means holding everyone accountable in the same way, regardless of race, gender, faith, ethnicity - or political ideology.” (Monica Crowley). This is especially true for women are beginning to be a true power in this world, with women becoming CEO’S of companies, and running for major offices. People need to realize that times are changing in the twenty-first century for women and today feminism is required to be successful in job fields like politics where women are taking a stand and becoming more assertive, in the home where single mothers who work are still producing children who help society, and in the workplace, where women still need to make a stand to make the same pay and have gender equality.…

    • 1327 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays

Related Topics